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A Minister of Grace 
 
 BY MARGARET WIDDEMER 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 'I've Married Marjorie," "Why Not?" "The 
 
 Wishing-Ring Man," "You're 
 
 Only Young Once/' etc. 
 
 A. L. BURT COMPANY 
 
 Publishers New York 
 
 Published by arrangement with Harcourt, Brace & Company 
 Printed in U. S. A. 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. 
 
 PRINTED IN TH U. 8. A. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 OF THE CLAN OF GOD 3 
 
 As ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 45 
 
 WILD WOODLAND 75 
 
 A MOMENT OF REVOLT 101 
 
 "NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 135 
 
 THAT OTHER EILEEN 169 
 
 ADJUSTMENT 197 
 
 THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 221 
 
 POWERS OF DARKNESS 256 
 
To 
 
 DR. AND MRS. CHARLES HOLLAND KIDDER 
 In Memory of Long Friendship 
 
A MINISTER OF GRACE 
 
 OF THE CLAN OF GOD 
 
 "I WOULDN'T do it, Marion," said Andrew Blanton 
 meditatively. 
 
 "Wouldn't do what?" demanded his sister-in-law. 
 She was the sister of his young wife, long dead even 
 in those days, when Marion's son Arden was a child. 
 But people who had even a shadow of relationship 
 to Dr. Blanton were apt to cling to it. 
 
 He eyed her, unafraid; which was an achievement, 
 for stately Mrs. Garrison possessed a combination of 
 quick charm, humor and conviction which made her 
 able to override most people and things. She was 
 not in the least conscious of it, be it said; and, being 
 religious as passionately as she was everything else, 
 overrode for good generally. 
 
 "I wouldn't make Arden into a clergyman until he 
 was let me see at least fifteen. According to the 
 best medieval authorities, indeed, which believed, as 
 did all the intelligentsia of the Middle Ages, in be- 
 ginning the business of life at adolescence, sixteen was 
 the usual age " 
 
 She interrupted him with a quick mingling of 
 laughter and petulance, if a woman of her swift dig- 
 nity could be called petulant. 
 
 "Oh, you're laughing at me, with your rounded 
 periods. Of .course when you get to the Middle Ages 
 
 3 
 
4 OF THE CLAN OF GOD 
 
 there's nothing we poor clergywomen can say back. 
 I had an education once, but Ladies' Aid Societies 
 besides, it's what the child really wants. I think it 
 would have been, even if I hadn't given him to God 
 before he was born. I haven't influenced him. He 
 know's I'd be glad, of course. But he's only twelve. 
 If he turns to any other profession I we would let 
 him go willingly. I can't honestly say gladly." 
 
 "I wonder," said Andrew Blanton, with his little 
 laugh, looking at her affectionately over his spectacles, 
 "how many things even the best of women can say 
 "honestly?" 
 
 "I speak my mind," said Mrs. Garrison, "a good 
 deal more than I should in my position, I'm afraid." 
 
 "I know I know!" said Andrew Blanton, with an 
 affectation of humorous apprehension. "To me, some- 
 times, my dear Marion. But be merciful to-day to 
 an elderly gentleman, and content with, what I am 
 told, was a signal victory over the Senior Warden's 
 wife, who wanted to send her Mary to a French con- 
 vent for the social affiliations " 
 
 "She had no right to. What Roman Catholic would 
 put her daughter in a Protestant finishing school for 
 the social affiliations, as you call them? But I only 
 reasoned with her till she saw it." 
 
 "You don't know how much you can do with 
 people, do you, Marion? I often wonder," he went on, 
 furtively opening a volume by a new writer it was a 
 Chesterton which he had borrowed of her husband 
 and peeping in, "why I am so uncowed. I often stay 
 
OF THE CLAN OF GOD 5 
 
 here for days together. Yet I may say," he ended 
 in triumph, "that except in matters of the flesh, such 
 as coming to meals on time, I have never submitted 
 my conscience to you once!" 
 
 "I hope no one ever has! But wasn't I right 
 about the convent?" 
 
 "Of course you were. And you hypnotized Mrs. 
 Greening into momentary nobility of character. 
 Much better than none," said Dr. Blanton sincerely. 
 "But as for your small boy, you began with the 
 assumption that God wanted him for one of His min- 
 isters before he was born. He's not really had his 
 chance to escape. . . . Surely you have heard the 
 story, my dear Marion, of the young man who was 
 so certain that he had a call to preach but to whom 
 his Bishop had to explain that it must have been 
 some other noise he heard?" 
 
 "If it is God's will, he'll grow up to be a clergy- 
 man. If it isn't, he won't. It's the best and noblest 
 profession in the world," said his mother earnestly, 
 smoothing down the black silk which only her regal 
 slenderness kept from overt shabbiness. She was a 
 genuinely high-minded woman, for as her father and 
 grandfather before her had been clergymen, as well 
 as her husband and brother-in-law, she should have 
 known exactly what she was talking about; and 
 from her point of view she did. She would have said, 
 if you asked her, that she counted worldly prosperity 
 a very small thing compared to the privilege of preach- 
 ing Christ and him crucified. But she knew nothing 
 
6 OF THE CLAN OF GOD 
 
 of other professions, and, without knowing it, viewed 
 from a little rising ground all the other people in the 
 world, as being made for the benefit and ministra- 
 tions of her caste. She loved them, of course, and 
 wanted to do all she could for their souls and bodies. 
 She was by far the strongest personality in her house- 
 hold, and Arden grew up, built by her hands as she 
 wished him, strong though he was himself. 
 
 He was, at manhood, everything a mother could 
 have wished, though not in the least a prig. There 
 was never the traditional break-away of the clergy- 
 man's son; the Garrisons' was too kindly and interest- 
 ing a household for that. Arden was a son to be 
 proud of from any point of view; tall, handsome, with 
 a gentle, commanding courtesy which won people even 
 before they found that he was as honorable and 
 simple-minded as he was passionately religious. He 
 took his orders, finally, with the enthusiasm and devo- 
 tion of a young knight of long ago. And being what 
 he was, young (it is then that the clergy are most 
 marketable), handsome, gently born and mannered, 
 with three generations of Episcopal clergy and their 
 connections behind him, he got, as his mother said 
 proudly, a better parish than his fathered ever had, 
 after the first curacy. 
 
 His mother had wished, secretly, that he could have 
 been married to Elisabeth Deering before he went to 
 his new kingdom, because it is a proverb of the 
 clergy, "build a church or marry a wife, and go." A 
 parish is a jealous bride, and doesn't like a rival. If 
 
OF THE CLAN OF GOD 7 
 
 your wife comes when you do, that's another thing. 
 Elisabeth was, every one felt perhaps too frankly 
 his heaven appointed mate; the best, the sweetest, 
 the most demurely gay of tactful and hardworking 
 bishop's nieces. She was a little bright thing with 
 strength and determination and kindness enough to 
 face what a clergyman's wife must, undaunted as 
 Mrs. Garrison herself was undaunted. Arden's 
 mother knew her own unbreakable kind when she saw 
 it. And she particularly respected Elisabeth because 
 the girl, unlike most of the women of the clergy, 
 never even said what she thought of things when she 
 was alone with women of other clergy. Few are as 
 brave as that. And she was pink and white and 
 goldy-blond adorably pretty. It was supposed that 
 the string of theological students' scalps which she 
 possessed would have gone three times in festoons 
 across her looking-glass. It was also supposed that 
 she might marry Arden if he asked her. 
 
 He did not ask her. He did not want to marry 
 yet; he was only twenty-six. Of course, far back in 
 his mind was the knowledge that some day, when he 
 was older and had got around to settling down, she 
 would be the best person to settle down with. He was 
 mildly pleased to know that in his new charge she 
 would be intermittently near by, for Dr. Blanton and 
 the bishop were classmates and old friends, and Elisa- 
 beth visited him both with and without Bishop 
 Brewer. Indeed, she had adopted him as a sort of 
 brevet uncle. There was a distant connection of 
 
8 OF THE CLAN OF GOD 
 
 some sort. He would see them all soon, he knew. 
 Clergymen, of course, cannot spend week-ends with 
 friends ; but he was pledged to a midweek visit as soon 
 as he could manage it. 
 
 The new parish was a charming if fashionable spot 
 at the lower end of Pennsylvania. They gave him a 
 small but excellent car, because the place was prin- 
 cipally estates, except for a reach of village inhabited 
 by the poor and needy, the druggist and the post- 
 office. The druggist was good, but the poor and 
 needy were not; they were the dregs too often found 
 in country places where every one has gone away ex- 
 cept those without enough character. 
 
 The parish also gave Arden a delightful little rec- 
 tory, exquisitely furnished anew by the women of the 
 parish; indeed, one or two of the vestry made half- 
 humorous apology for its artistic atmosphere, the 
 night they gave Arden his reception in it. You 
 couldn't put your feet up, said the Senior Warden, 
 a benevolent though predatory old millionaire with a 
 stubby white mustache and a fatherly way. His 
 daughter Nancy was too fond of art effects for a 
 man to be able to drop ashes in comfort where her 
 decorating hand had passed. 
 
 He chuckled, and his wife, it seemed to Arden, 
 looked a little watchful. He remembered now having 
 been told that Mr. Whitall had been of the people, 
 with a late-married wife who wasn't. 
 
 When, a moment later, Arden saw Nancy Whitall, 
 he realized that such a girl had a right, if she wanted 
 
OF THE CLAN OF GOD 9 
 
 to, to decorate the place with cigar-band plates, or 
 tie up all the furniture with pink ribbons. Some- 
 thing happened to him when he saw her that made 
 him shiver all over and catch his breath dizzily for 
 a moment. She seemed to concern him more in- 
 tensely than anything he had ever seen. 
 
 She was not unusually pretty; nothing like as 
 pretty, indeed, as little Elisabeth. She was tanned 
 deeply, as if by much outdoor life, and her features 
 were a little irregular. There was a smooth, adjusted 
 perfection like her mother's about everything she said 
 and did, combining curiously with a short-phrased, 
 half insolent naturalness which he thought might be 
 the mark of her father in her. She had the certain- 
 ty and amused friendliness of a girl who, pleasant 
 and kind enough, had never had to remember to please 
 or fear any one in her life. It was not a manner he 
 knew. Even his mother, power that she was, never 
 for a moment forgot the necessity of watching and 
 adjusting herself to the flock. 
 
 Nancy Whitall made Arden feel realizingly for the 
 first time that there were other worlds of people, as 
 desirable to inhabit as his own. He had been taught 
 to consider, with a certain pride, that existence con- 
 sisted of the clergy and others. This girl made him 
 see a new land, with quite as wonderful people in it. 
 And her first words to him, curiously enough, showed 
 that she too felt their meeting to be an adventure in 
 strange countries for them both. 
 
 "You're very like a clergyman," she said, looking 
 
io OF THE CLAN 'OF GOD 
 
 at him with a provocative smile, "but you don't put it 
 on. It's just in you." 
 
 For the moment he had a little pricking sense of 
 inferiority. 
 
 "Naturally. I am one, you know," he said, the 
 more proudly because of the prick. 
 
 "I like it. I like your being a new kind of man. 
 And my nurse used to say an old proverb, 
 
 "The black coat and the red 
 Turn a poor woman's head!" 
 
 "Why, look at these ramping crowds who wish I'd 
 go away!" 
 
 She indicated the pretty groups of chattering 
 women, obviously waiting for a chance to make a fuss 
 over the new clergyman. 
 
 "Good-by for awhile," she said, and obliterated 
 herself in the crowd so swiftly that it was like a 
 vanishing. Other women took her place, as pretty 
 and interesting and charming mannered, but Arden 
 spoke to them mechanically. It took all his equip- 
 ment of charm and courtesy and friendliness to make 
 him seem to care what any one else said or did for 
 the rest of the evening. 
 
 Because of Nancy's importance to him, what she 
 had said rankled. The truth was, he had been a 
 little tired of shop, though he did not know it; and 
 this new world of charming, easy-mannered people, 
 who set him so at ease and made him feel so com- 
 
OF THE CLAN OF GOD n 
 
 fortable and happy, was very delightful to him. He 
 began to be glad that he was not too old to become 
 narrowed and professionalized. 
 
 And when he spent his promised midweek with Dr. 
 Blanton, summoned when Bishop Brewer was there, it 
 all seemed a little dim and musty. There was the 
 well-known kind of talk; a change in the prayer- 
 book as a matter of national importance; a new 
 hymn of the Bishop's sister which might, with luck, 
 get into the next revision of the Hymnal; a matter 
 of doctrine over which every one at table grew as im- 
 passioned as his own flock did over world-politics . . . 
 it was all so old! Even the way little Elisabeth 
 guarded her lips from what his mother called "unchar- 
 itable talk," and conscientiously spoke well of every 
 one, (anything else is unsafe as well as unkind, for 
 minister-folk) wore on him. So did the fact that her 
 pretty fair hair was knotted at the wrong angle. 
 (Of course she wouldn't dare make talk by bobbing 
 it.) And her shoes were the wrong kind to go with 
 the pink muslin she wore for a dinner frock. . . . 
 
 The truth was, he was restive to get back to Nancy 
 Whitall's country, and everything she stood for was 
 right, and everything that she did not was a little 
 annoying to him. It was such a beautiful land that he 
 had found, and the old one was so old I 
 
 The parish adored him with the ardor of a parish's 
 first six months; that cloudless and joyful time which 
 cynical clergywomen know as "the honeymoon." He 
 stayed close to it, and adored itand Nancy back. 
 
12 OF THE CLAN OF GOD 
 
 Occasionally he went over to see Dr. Blanton, and 
 semi-occasionally he ran into Elisabeth. He was, he 
 assured himself, as fond of them both as ever. Elisa- 
 beth's schooling, like his own, included a trained 
 cheerfulness and cordiality which did not show her 
 feelings. He found her just the same as ever; even 
 on her flying visits accomplishing a vast amount of 
 parish work with her usual sweet gaiety, and the 
 pretty compliments to all and sundry which were a 
 part of her ways. If, when they talked, her enthu- 
 siasm over her Sunday-school scholars at home, and 
 Americanization meetings, was sometimes a little hec- 
 tic and forced, nobody noticed it, least of all Arden, 
 in love with Nancy and his own parish. Nancy was 
 giving him points on riding, his motor was a new and 
 beloved toy, and the parish moved under his hand like 
 a well-trained, adoring pet animal. 
 
 It was in an unimportant chink of his new life, 
 thrilled as it was with the double joy of being in love 
 and being successful, that he had the sexton dis- 
 charged. That functionary had never fitted his task 
 or his surroundings well. He had been taken on by 
 Arden's mistakenly charitable predecessor because he 
 needed a job, and was too well known in the village 
 to get any. The new rector, desirous of efficiency, 
 found him an unpleasant, soiled young man who never 
 dusted the backs of the pews. The vestry, told about 
 it, agreed with conviction that he was not the man 
 for the place, and replaced him immediately. 
 
 When notified of his fall the ex-sexton growled more 
 
OF THE CLAN OF GOD 13 
 
 disagreeably than ever. He'd git even with that 
 there parson, he said with curses. He departed, em- 
 bittered to the last degree, to loaf in the bosom of his 
 family. 
 
 Now that large body which we still, in America, 
 feel impolite when calling the lowest classes, contains 
 the only true romanticists left us. It is no more than 
 natural. They live close to the primal realities which 
 every thousand on one's income puts farther away; 
 hunger, cold, hate, anger, terror, passion, revenge. 
 They reckon with them, as we do not they take them 
 seriously. Melodrama, hushed away from us, has 
 taken refuge with these simpler children, who believe 
 in it because they live it. It is in the movies they 
 see, the newspapers they read, the roomers above 
 them. . . . They can no more doubt life to be the 
 sort of thing it was for the Duchess of Malfi than 
 you or I can doubt our pleasant monotonies. Of 
 course, when wronged, you scheme for revenge if 
 you can get away with it. Didn't that girl that roomed 
 with the Hojeks. . . . Oh, it happens. 
 
 The curious thing curious from our viewpoint is 
 that it does happen. But we scarcely believe it, be- 
 cause it is not in our book of the rules, even when 
 it drips over from their lives to ours. 
 
 To Bill Parkerman, ex-sexton, it was quite a nor- 
 mal, natural thing to plan for "gittin' even with that 
 there parson." He consulted his aged mother about 
 it, and she agreed with him that it was the self- 
 respecting thing to do. They hoped optimistically 
 
14 OF THE CLAN OF GOD 
 
 not only for the revenge, but a little money on the 
 side. 
 
 The Parkermans had not the best of reputations 
 even in their own set; which was so distant from all 
 other visible sets that neither Garrison nor any of 
 his friends and acquaintances except the Chief of 
 Police, whom he spoke to cordially when they met 
 realized it was anywhere. There had been no Park- 
 erman pere or peres, for Bill, his sixteen-year-old 
 sister Leora, his eighteen-year-old sister Valencia, and 
 his twenty-year-old married brother Alfred, were all 
 "halves." V'lencia was unmarried and gone, living 
 in a guilty splendor which included a beautiful green 
 plush mission set and a player-piano, deeply envied by 
 all. There was not so much chance of Leora's being 
 offered as beautiful a life, because she had epilepsy 
 or something like it. Alfred was a small, sallow lad 
 who suggested the evils of excessive cigarettes almost 
 to the point of being a Tract. It was, altogether, a 
 wicked and abandoned family of the kind only be- 
 lieved in by pessimists, police officials and people 
 who write eugenic monographs. And they do not 
 really want to. They find they have to. 
 
 Arden Garrison, who was gentle, friendly-hearted, 
 and a little too much inclined to think that God didn't 
 intend him to have troubles, was certainly far from 
 thinking the Parkermans to be as far from the normal 
 as they were. They were no eugenist could have 
 done more than justice to them, their ancestors be- 
 fore them and unquestionably their abundant offspring 
 
OF THE CLAN OF GOD 15 
 
 after them. But what was a sexton more or less, 
 anyway, with Nancy Whitall in the foreground of a 
 young man's mind? Sextons were unimportant items 
 of business Nancy was a glowing- fairy-tale. 
 
 Arden was nevertheless a faithful parish priest, and 
 when old Mrs. Parkerman offered an authentic case 
 of rheumatism and desired prayers, he went like a 
 shot, calling off golf with the second most important 
 parishioner. 
 
 She may have really wanted the prayers. Some 
 people of her kind consider them a better curative 
 agent than a horse-chestnut in the pocket, and in- 
 variably try the ministrations of the nearest clergy- 
 man before calling in the more expensive services of 
 a doctor. She got the prayers, at least. Arden knelt 
 in the little dirty house, beside the unwashed bed- 
 clothes, and, with Leora kneeling beside him and Bill 
 at the rocker, prayed earnestly and fervently. He 
 afterward looked the place over with the trained eye 
 of his profession, and decided just what it needed in the 
 way of money and food, and that the parish nurse 
 should be detailed on the case. He hoped that she 
 could coax them to a little cleanliness, especially 
 Leora, who was young enough to have possibilities 
 of betterment. She had a loose-lipped prettiness of 
 big eyes and long lines, and the too-transparent rose 
 and white coloring which looks so admirable to all 
 but doctors. Arden suggested to her very gently 
 that she wash things, including her hands and face, a 
 little. She looked at him submissively from under 
 
16 OF THE CLAN OF GOD 
 
 her long lashes and promised everything with a soft 
 and fluent sweetness. 
 
 "Leory can't work," croaked the old woman on the 
 bed. "It brings on her havin' fits, she says." 
 
 Leora flashed a vicious glance at her mother. She 
 hated references to her ailment, which she preferred 
 to call to herself her fainting-spells. But that she 
 couldn't work she quite agreed. They both begged 
 him to come again and pray. 
 
 "I feel lots better already," said Mrs. Parkerman 
 quite sincerely. 
 
 Arden noted in his little book the particulars of 
 the case, and went away, drawing a quick breath of 
 relief as he stepped out into the sunshine. His little 
 car whirled him toward the Country Club. He might 
 be in time for a round of golf after all, if he hurried 
 if not with the second most influential parishioner, 
 perhaps with Nancy. He dwelt in his mind on the 
 thought of her, slim and carelessly gay in her little 
 assured, defiant way, with that perfection of groom- 
 ing as to her hands and her flare of dusky, Florentine- 
 cut hair, which only women with maids attain. Elisa- 
 beth's hair came into his mind in contrast, and he 
 tried to think he was remembering it affectionately. 
 It was sunny and pretty, all little wisps and ringlets. 
 She did it herself, of course. Sometimes the pins 
 dropped out and had to be tucked back. He won- 
 dered if he couldn't speak to her about doing it differ- 
 ently when he saw her next, by way of improving 
 
OF THE CLAN OF GOD 17 
 
 her a little. Elisabeth and he were such old friends, 
 surely she wouldn't mind. . . . 
 
 And then he forgot Elisabeth, for there, sure enough, 
 on the Country Club porch, stood Nancy. She had 
 on a scarlet hat and sweater; she seemed all of a 
 piece with the Spring sunshine and the blowing wind 
 and the green of the links. She was laughing with 
 another man. Arden's heart gave a spring, half de- 
 light at seeing her, half annoyance that there should 
 be any other man in the world who spoke to her. 
 He hurried in, and promptly took measures that this 
 particular man shouldn't, anyway. With his charm- 
 ing touch of gentle authority he detached Nancy with 
 a noiseless quickness which made her look at him 
 with frank admiration. 
 
 "I like that!" she told him coolly. "I like people 
 who walk over other people to get what they want. 
 I think it shows that you really value a a thing. Is 
 that the way being four generations of clergymen 
 makes you act?" 
 
 He flushed a little at her mockery, elated neverthe- 
 less at what she said. 
 
 "I didn't mean to walk over any one," he explained 
 gently. "I didn't think about anything but talking 
 to you. Let's go round once, if you haven't been too 
 often. Will you?" 
 
 She nodded, and he hurried off to change. He saw 
 her recaptured by the other man, this time without 
 a pang. It was only till he was ready for her. 
 
x8 OF THE CLAN OF GOD 
 
 He told her, incidentally, about the Parkermans, 
 as much as it was decent for her to know, while 
 they went over the turf together in the sunshiny 
 spring wind. 
 
 "Bill promised to 'get' me when I had the vestry 
 discharge him," he told her amusedly. "But I've 
 made friends with him, I think. They seem to bear 
 no malice at all. Indeed, the poor little girl with the 
 epilepsy seemed very grateful for what I could do 
 for the mother. Poor child, it's a pity about her; 
 she's such a pretty, graceful kid." 
 
 "Isn't there something I can do? I think it's a 
 thrilling case!" was Nancy's reaction to the tale. 
 
 But he shook his head. It was like her loveliness 
 to care, but he did not want her in contact with any- 
 thing of the kind. He would have taken Elisabeth, 
 or his own little sister, to help such people, if need 
 had arisen; they were born to such ministrations. 
 But he wanted Nancy, fresh and lovely and unmarked, 
 to stay as she was. Those gay, piquing insolences, so 
 different from the too thoughtful courtesy of the wo- 
 menfolk he knew . . . they were a child's ways. 
 They might be changed something might be changed 
 by the contact with Leora's atmosphere. 
 
 He turned the subject to Nancy herself. He wanted 
 to hear about the things that had made her Nancy. 
 The hunting in England, the wonderful excitements 
 of her winter in New York, the schooling in France 
 he drew her out about all of it, delighting in the 
 sweep of her gaiety, and even in the young ruthless- 
 
OF THE CLAN OF GOD 19 
 
 ness that showed through her tales of pleasure and 
 conquest. He talked of himself, too. Each was 
 exploring a new country with delight. 
 
 He walked all through his little jewel of a rectory 
 that night late he had dined out, as he did most 
 evenings seeing Nancy in its setting; Nancy, excit- 
 ingly incongruous, miraculously keeping her present 
 graces, and yet the perfect rector's wife. His cheeks 
 burned like a girl's at his dream. 
 
 "Dear Lord," he prayed under his breath, "grant 
 Thy blessing on this hope I am daring to hold. 
 Make my road the right one. Guide me, O Lord, 
 but give me, if it please Thee, this happiness." 
 
 His prayer slipped quite naturally into the beauti- 
 ful phraseology of the Book of Common Prayer; but 
 it was none the less sincere and passionate for that. 
 
 He was interrupted by a telephone call. It was 
 Bill Parkerman, his rough voice as smooth and polite 
 as the Wolf's in the fairy tale after it had been 
 smoothed down by broken glass: the voice of the 
 days of undusted pew-backs and concealing assur- 
 ances of devotion. 
 
 "Mommer says would you come pray wit' her to- 
 morrer. You helped her a lot to-day, but she feels 
 somepin' fierce to-night." 
 
 Arden promised, of course, and not only that, but 
 he called up the parish nurse next morning and told 
 her that he had a particular interest in the case. Was 
 it not the first bit of parish work he had shared with 
 Nancy? 
 
20 OF THE CLAN OF GOD 
 
 Mrs. Parkerman continued to find that her soul 
 and her rheumatism needed Arden's society. She 
 was very insistent on the prayers, and Arden became 
 quite used to kneeling there twice or three times 
 a week, Leora kneeling devoutly beside him. By 
 the second or third seance more of the family ap- 
 peared; the opulently unmarried V'lencia, and later 
 Alfred's sixteen-year-old wife, draggled, over-rouged 
 and birdlike, kneeling a bit self-consciously, and eye- 
 ing him queerly under her exaggerated sports-hat. He 
 liked her the best of the lot; she seemed such a wist- 
 ful bit of a thing in spite of her cheapness, and he had 
 one or two scraps of talk with her. She seemed to 
 waver between distrust and another feeling he could 
 not make out almost sympathy. He tried to get her 
 to come to one of the girls 7 Bible-classes, but without 
 success. He was not discouraged; that the clan gath- 
 ered for prayers at all seemed to him a good sign. 
 
 It was the eighth time he visited them that they 
 sprang the trap. (It sounds like rank melodrama, 
 when you come to tell it. But melodrama was prac- 
 tically all there was in the limited Parkerman reper- 
 toire.) Arden was kneeling, as usual, with Leora be- 
 side him sharing his prayerbook, open at the Visita- 
 tion of the Sick. 
 
 "O Lord," he was saying, "look down from heaven, 
 visit and relieve this thy servant " 
 
 His head was bowed and his eyes closed, for nat- 
 urally he knew the service by heart. He never went 
 
OF THE CLAN OF GOD 21 
 
 any further with that prayer in that house. Leora 
 gave a moan and dropped against him, both pretty, 
 dirty hands groping for his, and clutching his arm as 
 she fell. He caught her, rose with her in his arms, 
 and looked about for somewhere to put her. 
 
 "Here here's her room," said the little sister-in- 
 law with a choke of excitement in her voice. 
 
 She flung open the door into a gaudily untidy little 
 box, and Arden laid the girl gently down on a littered 
 cot in the corner. The dirty, slender hands were 
 strong. She clung as he bent to lower her, and, taking 
 him unawares, pulled his face down and kissed it fev- 
 erishly. Even then no idea of what it was all about 
 came to Arden; not until he heard Bill Parkerman's 
 raucous voice in the doorway. 
 
 "So this is the sort o' thing parsons pull, after firm' 
 a man fer nothin' at all!" was the beginning of what 
 he said; the rest is too evil to put down. 
 
 Arden, pulling himself from Leora's grasp, stared 
 at the crew bewildered. They were all crowding in 
 through the door, the whole infamous tribe; Alfred, 
 dingy and furtive even in this great scene of defend- 
 ing a sister's honor; Bill, heavy-shouldered, brutal, 
 uglily triumphant, a bit too much like a stage burglar 
 to be convincing; V'lencia, tawdry and big, and Hazel, 
 the sister-in-law, tawdry and little. Even the old 
 mother had hobbled over, though her rheumatism was 
 one of the few genuine things she owned, and stood 
 peering between the girls' elaborate heads in her dirty 
 
22 OF THE CLAN OF GOD 
 
 shaker-flannel nightgown. Arden had never known 
 that such scenes existed in real life. 
 
 The gist of what they yelled at him was that they 
 would disgrace him for life; unless he might possibly 
 wish to pay them so much that their wounded feelings 
 might be forgotten in the lap of luxury. Or if he in- 
 sisted he might marry Leora though they were not 
 sure that they would deign. The old mother was 
 shrillest, with a better vocabulary of vileness than 
 the young people; though Bill made up for lack of 
 variety by forceful repetition. V'lencia, buxom and 
 assured in conscious prosperity, burst in at any chink 
 left by her relatives. The little sister-in-law, newer 
 to the family customs, did little but stare, and affirm 
 violently when appealed to. ... ("You seen it comin' 
 a long time, ain't you, Hazel? Leory told you, didn't 
 she, V'lency?" on the old mother's part.) 
 
 Arden broke from the pack at last, so glad to get 
 out into the air, and have his ears rested from the 
 aching impact of the shrieked and shouted obscenities 
 that he was almost happy in the mere silence and fresh- 
 ness of the drive home. 
 
 The first thing, he knew, was to go to his vestry 
 about it, the second was to get in touch with the 
 Bishop. There was a chance that the Parkermans 
 might not mean the worst, but it was too slight to 
 depend on. The vestry, if it was merciful and wise, 
 would not make it public. He knew the Bishop 
 would not. And his mother, stern, infinitely loving 
 prophetess in Israel that she was beneath her gaiety 
 
OF THE CLAN OF GOD 23 
 
 his little sister, his kind old stately father, inno- 
 cently vain of his son; Elisabeth, his clergyman 
 uncles they would all have to know they would all 
 be stabbed and stained. From the very thought of 
 Nancy knowing he winced away. Surely if he prayed 
 very hard God would spare him that. Into that gay, 
 childishly daring young heart surely such morbid hor- 
 rors had never come. 
 
 The vestry did as well as could be expected. They 
 were not inclined to publicity unless the worst came 
 to the worst. One or two of them were a little 
 dubious. . . . 
 
 "It's a serious charge a serious charge, Mr. Garri- 
 son," said the fat Junior Warden, Far r ell, whom 
 Arden had never much liked, because he knew him 
 not to be a straight-living man. But old Whitall, in 
 his brusk, impersonal way, encouraged Arden in a 
 brief sentence or so. He, like the Bishop, his friend, 
 had a personal fondness for Arden. There was some- 
 thing in the boy which called out a feeling of father- 
 hood in kind old men. 
 
 Seeing the Bishop was easier. Dr. Blanton went 
 with him, by his own suggestion. Somehow the trip 
 with Uncle Andrew, with his amused leisureliness and 
 his attitude that excerpts (to be read aloud) from 
 essayists of a bygone day were much more important 
 than the most exciting happening of the present, was 
 quieting. 
 
 You could almost believe that the Parkermans and 
 their works were a wild tale from some inferior news- 
 
24 OF THE CLAN OF GOD 
 
 paper, while Uncle Andrew held forth from Alexander 
 Smith at unhurried length. 
 
 "It's not the end of the world, my boy," he said. 
 "From what I can make out your friends the Parker- 
 mans are a pest to the community; ought to be in in- 
 stitutions, of course, every one of 'em. The world, I 
 hope, will come to that sort of thing in time. But 
 you must be prepared for the fact that it's an artless 
 world, and that the worst trouble you'll have, if it 
 comes out, will be in making folks believe in conspir- 
 acies off the stage. Even the German war didn't suc- 
 ceed in making some folks believe that there isn't a 
 lot to be said on both sides of everything; it makes 
 them feel so high-minded and charitable to speak 
 well of the devil. But don't worry over it, my son; 
 I've seen worse things than this come out right." 
 
 The Bishop was comforting, too, though none knew 
 better than the two old clergyman the tight-rope a 
 clergyman's name, more fragile than a woman's, must 
 walk. There had been times in the Bishop's young 
 days when it took all his own caution, combined with 
 the resources of a clever and resolute wife, to keep 
 the wives of leading parishioners in a safe frame of 
 mind. He and Dr. Blanton recalled a couple of these 
 tales for Arden's comfort. 
 
 "But Alice and Jim weathered them all," added 
 Uncle Andrew with a twinkle, "and so will you, boy." 
 
 "I didn't need to have your mother write me to 
 know it's an obvious plot," added the Bishop. "But 
 they ought to have had more sense than to think they 
 
OF THE CLAN OF GOD 25 
 
 could get satisfactory blackmail from a clergyman; 
 all the world knows we never have any money!" 
 
 "There's a girl " Arden blurted out before he 
 thought. 
 
 "And she has money?" inferred the Bishop 
 shrewdly. His shrewdness had never extended to 
 connecting Arden with his Elisabeth, whom he was 
 none too anxious to lose. He thought it would be a 
 good thing for Arden to marry a nice girl with money. 
 
 "Yes; that's why I haven't said anything definite 
 to her," Arden admitted. "Of course now I can't. 
 The Parkermans may have known I liked her " 
 
 "Of course they have," said the Bishop. "That's 
 the answer. Well, lad, go through it as bravely as 
 you can. Every one's back of you. And it mayn't 
 come to anything, as Andrew says." 
 
 That night (they were staying the night) he had 
 a little talk apart with Elisabeth. She caught his 
 hand impulsively, as they walked up and down the 
 verandah. The old men were laughing over some 
 stories of old days in the house. They could see the 
 kindly old heads leaning to one another through the 
 window. They seemed very old and callous suddenly, 
 and he was transiently drawn to Elisabeth; after all 
 she was young too. 
 
 "I've heard about it all," she said, her voice shaken 
 out of a little of its calm sweetness. "It's horrible. 
 Uncle Andrew told me all about it while you were 
 upstairs. Oh, Arden, isn't there anything I can do 
 to help? He said he thought I could." 
 
26 OF THE CLAN OF GOD 
 
 Just one of those foolish things Uncle Andrew 
 mooned into doing. But after all she had had to 
 know. 
 
 "No," he said, "of course not. Only believe in me," 
 he added, snatching at her affection, unconsciously, 
 as a shield to his self-respect. And he judged Nancy 
 by her, a little, too. 
 
 "Oh, that!" said Elisabeth, laughing as if the thing 
 were ridiculous. "You know I believe in you ... in 
 every way." 
 
 "But supposing they could seem to prove I did it?" 
 he asked, unheeding the catch of passion in her 
 voice in his absorption in himself and Nancy. He 
 put her in Nancy's place. Nancy might hear. Better 
 men than he had been proved guilty when they were 
 innocent. 
 
 Elisabeth's little pink and white face sobered. 
 
 "If you really did it, of course you would be a very 
 wicked man. I don't think I could ever want to see 
 you again. ... But nothing any one could say would 
 make me believe you were. I know better that's 
 all. . . ." But Nancy was so unlessoned in life. Elisa- 
 beth, from her position, knew more of human nature, 
 of wickedness and injustice and evil, than Nancy had 
 ever needed to know. Sometimes too great innocence 
 is so shocked by its first facing of evil as to believe 
 it helplessly. ... He lost himself so deep in thought 
 of what Nancy might think as to scarcely hear Elisa- 
 beth, asking him questions in her swift, sweet childish 
 voice that was so efficient. She questioned him closely 
 
OF THE CLAN OF GOD 27 
 
 about the Parkermans, Valencia, Hazel, Alfred, the 
 old mother, as if she were trying to think out some- 
 thing. Was she trying to sift the evidence already? 
 
 "Valencia," she said musingly; "she sounds pretty 
 hardened. The mother, I suppose, would be beyond 
 doing anything with. . . . The little sister-in-law who 
 dropped you into the trap just one of those poor 
 little street-sparrows only sixteen . . . and I sup- 
 pose the Alfred brother dopes, which is, of course, 
 hopeless." 
 
 He interrupted her in a burst of impatience. 
 
 "You mean all right, Beth, but for goodness' sake 
 don't talk about it any more!" 
 
 She was commenting and weighing so coolly! And 
 he was feverish to get away, to see Nancy. . . . Then 
 he came back remorsefully to little Elisabeth, smiling 
 at him still with her trained sweetness which no wound 
 could outwardly ruffle, but with eyes which had winced 
 at his words. 
 
 "Very well," she was acquiescing brightly; "and re- 
 member that we're all praying for you as hard as ever 
 we can. Our Lord will see it through the right way. 
 . . . But one thing I would do, Arden, if you don't 
 mind my saying it; I'd go back with Uncle Andrew 
 for a day or two, if you can leave your parish that 
 much longer. He wants you, I know, and it will give 
 you a perspective." 
 
 He thanked her, and suggested going in. He did 
 not know how much that steady brightness cost her. 
 ... He was tired of hearing about the Lord. He'd 
 
28 OF THE CLAN OF GOD 
 
 heard about him all his life and here he was! He'd 
 been made over to the Lord before he had any say 
 about it, trained like a sheep to walk into a pen. 
 And now . . . and now. . . . 
 
 But in the end he did go back with Dr. Blanton. 
 He could get a respite from his bitter thoughts, back 
 in the little sleepy rectory where the worst problem, 
 so far as one could tell, was the darky housekeeper's 
 struggle to dust the books without touching them, 
 which was Dr. Blanton's only demand. 
 
 He found himself pouring out his feelings to Dr. 
 Blanton, in spite of himself, before he had been there 
 a day, as the two sat in the shabby book-lined study. 
 
 "I hate it all," he said angrily. "Mother always 
 telling me that we were set apart to guide the souls 
 of men . . . that nothing could be more wonderful or 
 better worth suffering for. But women don't know. 
 . . . My Lord, Uncle Andrew, I don't feel as if I'd 
 been set apart I feel as if I'd been chained; locked 
 in a prison like Caspar Hauser, too young to know 
 any better. The other men Nancy Whitall knows 
 can be men; they don't have to purr and ask vestries 
 to sit in judgment on them, and beg mercy from 
 bishops through their mothers. To have to feel like 
 a yellow dog for the Gospel of Christ " 
 
 Uncle Andrew pulled the little pointed gray beard 
 that somehow managed to look clerical, and consid- 
 ered Arden with a quizzical gentleness. 
 
 "No, my boy, you didn't have a chance," he agreed 
 with a staggering frankness. "Most of your fore- 
 
OF THE CLAN OF GOD 29 
 
 bears and connections were clergymen. Your mother 
 was of clergy stock. The air all round you was full 
 of the suggestion that you be a clergyman when you 
 grew up. But my own feeling about you has been 
 that you were not so much the yellow dog you describe 
 as the bon Men qui chasse de face. . . . But of 
 course one doesn't know. Why, this may be a bless- 
 ing in disguise, boy! With the influential friends in 
 your parish you may be able to get out of the ministry 
 and into something where you can have the normal 
 man's ideals and the normal man's riches, and not 
 bother about guiding the souls of men any longer. . . . 
 Only I wouldn't stop saying my prayers for awhile 
 yet." 
 
 He looked at the old clergyman in surprise. This 
 was the last counsel he would have expected from 
 Uncle Andrew, for all his little mannerisms a priest to 
 the bone. 
 
 "You really think," he began. 
 
 " Really, once in a long while, as a change from 
 allowing my betters in the daily prints and monthly 
 magazines to think for me," said Uncle Andrew 
 amiably. "At present my thought-capacity, such as it 
 is, is exercised by the idea that perhaps you don't 
 belong to your caste except by training. If your 
 ideals are those of Miss Nancy that is Mr. Whitall's 
 daughter, I think if you really belong to that class 
 and caste, that is where you should actually be, and 
 not allow a mistaken mother's pressure to continue 
 to mold your life fifteen years afterward." 
 
30 OF THE CLAN OF GOD 
 
 Arden's eyes lighted. He had never seriously al- 
 lowed himself to think of that way of escape. The 
 consecration of the priest which laymen rarely re- 
 member at all is a thing the priest takes so seriously 
 as a rule that he never thinks of it any more than of 
 his hands; and considers detaching himself from it 
 about as much. . . . And he'd thought that Uncle An- 
 drew, like the rest, considered him more or less des- 
 tined to little Elisabeth. ... He must be wise after 
 all, to realize how things were. 
 
 "But I'd say my prayers just the same, boy," Uncle 
 Andrew suggested again when he came down, his 
 finger in the inevitable book, to say good-by. 
 
 Arden smiled back at him. Things felt better. 
 
 But back on the ground, the affair loomed inevi- 
 tably black and close again. . . . Even the terror of 
 feeling that these dear and charming people of his 
 might be making conversational capital out of his 
 tale in a couple of weeks was unbearable. He shiv- 
 ered in his soul at the thought of these pretty mock- 
 eries, which he had enjoyed so as a relief from the 
 careful charitableness of his own kind; the off-hand 
 flippancies of the men whom he had drawn into his 
 church work, and unconsciously become a little 
 like. ... But Nancy would not mock, even if she 
 knew surely not Nancy. The rude strain in her 
 father was a piquant daringness in her; the easy forth- 
 rightness of her mother, veiling, he had learned, as 
 deep a caste-spirit as his mother's own surely it 
 veiled, too, as high feelings and nobilities 1 
 
OF THE CLAN OF GOD 3* 
 
 "Oh, God," he prayed wildly, walking up and down 
 his study, "Make Nancy loyal to me at any cost! 
 Make her stanch to me, whether it is thy will or not!" 
 
 It was the first prayer he had ever allowed himself 
 to make, unguarded by the "Thy Will Be Done" 
 which his childhood training had insisted on as a 
 necessary thing. Such unguarded prayers, the spirit- 
 ually wise tell you, have more chance of being an- 
 swered. But for all that it is a mistake, they say, to 
 make them. 
 
 He went to see Nancy that night. He could keep 
 away from her no longer. She was unchanged to him, 
 just what she had been, which made him think that 
 her father had not told her. He was on fire to tell 
 her what was in his heart, that night, and it almost 
 seemed to him as if she was trying to win the actual 
 words from him, by word and movement, and manner, 
 that surely she could not realize were too reckless. 
 Once or twice during the evening he felt this over- 
 recklessness as jarring dimly; but he pushed it from 
 him. His ideals, he told himself truly, were those of 
 a certain small class, to whom touches and words 
 meant too much, guarded as they had to be. He 
 went home racked by the almost physical effort he 
 had had to make the evening through to keep from 
 taking Nancy in his arms and telling her how he 
 loved her; throbbing, too, with the excitement of the 
 most wonderful evening he had ever had with her. 
 She'd never had to weigh word or deed for the sake 
 of watching congregations, dear, unburdened young 
 
32 OF THE CLAN OF GOD 
 
 Nancy! He hoped she would never learn to, even 
 after they were married. 
 
 He dreamed on, all the way home. He had walked, 
 the longer to be out under the sky with his thoughts. 
 . . . Perhaps soon he could tell her. Things were 
 beginning to look safe again. 
 
 It is at such moments as these that blows, proverb- 
 ially, fall. 
 
 "Parkerman is here, Mr. Garrison," his house- 
 keeper told him pleasantly as he entered. "He won't 
 go away. I told him the new man was perfectly satis- 
 factory, and I didn't think there was any use his 
 staying, but he would do it." 
 
 Parkerman sat in the little room Arden's dreams 
 had always consecrated to Nancy; a hateful sight 
 there. He began his business without preface. He 
 had waited long enough, he explained. He'd shut up 
 because that old Blanton nice old cuss had been an' 
 talked to him about Mr. Whitall not likin' it. But 
 after all Whitall couldn't do much to a free American 
 citizen, if he did have a lot of ill-gotten money. Leora 
 was sick from the tragedy still she'd developed faint- 
 in'-fits from the shock. (The impudence of this 
 passed over Arden's head; he was too horror-struck.) 
 In fact, it seemed that the whole Parkerman family 
 was fading like a flower under this unprecedented 
 soilure of their scutcheon. It had the goods on the 
 parson, and unless highly paid would take great pleas- 
 ure in getting back at him. Or reinstatement, along 
 with back salary as sexton, might be considered. . . . 
 
OF THE CLAN OF GOD 33 
 
 He went into hideous details of what would get into 
 the papers. 
 
 "No matter how much pull you got you can't make 
 'em keep you after that, vestry nor church. You got 
 as much chanst to make a livin' as a celluloid pup 
 in hell. An'" Bill looked thoughtful "I dunno 
 but I'm goin' to tell the world anyhow. Any man that 
 would take advantage of prayin' to win the affections 
 of a trustin' young thing like Leory " 
 
 Arden could stand no more turns of his rack. 
 
 "Go as far as you like tell every one!" he cried, 
 springing to his feet and standing, tall, handsome, steel- 
 white, over the other man. "I have God on my side." 
 
 "An' all the pretty girls," Bill finished. "They're 
 more use. If you had that Nan Whitall enough 
 vamped to swing old Farrell for you they say his 
 wife wants to kill her him an' Whitall might fix it 
 up for you. But I guess you ain't." He leered as he 
 spoke of Nancy. "I guess I better fix things so you 
 can't wreck any more homes. You're too much of a 
 lady-killer for this here town." 
 
 Before he got any further Arden, furious, put him 
 out of the house by main strength. It was not hard; 
 all the Parker mans were physically frail. He came 
 back, excited almost to happiness by the physical out- 
 let. But in a few minutes the thing came to him in 
 its reality. For the hope of a distant future in an- 
 other profession from this that had been made so 
 hateful to him was a frail thing, against the actuality 
 of this impending disgrace. The thing would be 
 
34 OF THE CLAN OF GOD 
 
 public now. And his last chance of keeping it from 
 Nancy would be gone. 
 
 Next day Elisabeth called him on the telephone 
 Elisabeth, of all people, here in his own parish. Visit- 
 ing some friends, she said. She wanted him to come 
 over to see her. 
 
 He almost swore in his annoyance. He did not 
 want to see Elisabeth, who had always looked up to 
 him. His feeling for her included, naturally, a cer- 
 tain male lordliness, as is inevitable when a woman 
 has been suggested to a man as a matrimonial possi- 
 bility. But he had a very real fondness for her, and 
 a long training in doing what he ought whether he 
 liked or not. There was no excuse he could think of. 
 So he went. 
 
 After the first, it proved a comfort to talk the thing 
 out with her, she was so matter-of-fact about it. She 
 was sweet and comforting, even a little gay over the 
 seriousness with which he took it all. It was not in 
 the papers as yet; but there had been a flock of cun- 
 ningly written letters, which Parkerman must have 
 had ready before he went to make his last attempt at 
 Arden, settling down all over the parish. The people 
 Elisabeth was staying with bade him good-night with 
 marked cordiality . . . which he did not want to be 
 grateful for. But he had needed the relief Elisabeth's 
 counsel gave him, he realized after leaving. Only he 
 wished he had not given her the Parkerman address. 
 He hoped she had no wild plan of trying to soften 
 the hardened old wretch of a mother into confession: 
 
OF THE CLAN OF GOD 35 
 
 it was only in stories that people did that sort of 
 romantic thing, as Elisabeth should know after a life" 
 time of parish work. But you couldn't stop Elisabeth 
 after her mind was made up, and after all she had a 
 charm about her; even the Parkermans mightn't in- 
 sult little Elisabeth. 
 
 ... It was worse than he had thought it would be;' 
 the pitying looks of his people, assurances of belief 
 which hurt because they were condescendingly put; 
 letters from people whom he learned now for the first 
 time had always hated him; other letters from gushing 
 fools of both sexes; even the ones from kindly souls 
 the whole thing made a scar for life. He went 
 through it with courage, but it was a horrible week. 
 The vestry sat again, formally in judgment on him 
 this time. There was a parish meeting, reported to 
 him by a half dozen of the too-zealous, where there 
 was a long, long wrangle before he was granted that 
 futile thing, a vote of confidence. It was being kept 
 out of the papers by a miracle that could not be of 
 long continuance. There was the prospect of an eccle- 
 siastical trial. 
 
 Whitall was stanch through it all; but his attitude 
 hurt Arden more than he told himself it should. He 
 too plainly seemed less to defend Arden's innocence 
 than to admit, unofficially, that even if Arden had been 
 guilty it wasn't such an important thing to a man so 
 efficient in his profession. This was not his public 
 attitude, of course, nor even frankly his private one; 
 but Arden, sensitized into clairvoyance by his unhappi- 
 
36 OF THE CLAN OF GOD 
 
 ness, felt it none the less. No Sir Galahad was ever 
 prouder of his stainless shield than Arden, consecrated 
 priest, and son and grandson of priests, had been 
 trained to be. He did not realize that this was a 
 thing men outside his caste could not realize or know. 
 
 The end of that racking week was a summons to 
 Whi tail's house. Arden had thought he was steeled 
 for anything, but this was a last, needless humiliation. 
 He had carefully avoided Nancy since he knew that 
 she must know. He was nearly sure to see her, now. 
 . . . Yet his heart leaped a little in spite of him at 
 the hope. He had prayed that she be loyal to him 
 at whatever cost, and he believed that God would 
 answer that prayer. And yet ... if she were 
 not. . . . 
 
 Well, if she were not, he told himself, so much the 
 better for her. For her father's last telephoned words 
 had taken nearly all hope from him. 
 
 "Some new business has turned up," Whitall had 
 said. "Come over right away." 
 
 The telephone rang desperately again, just as he 
 left, but he did not answer it. He hurried out and 
 drove over to Whitall's in the little car he had loved 
 so boyishly, staring straight ahead with eyes which 
 scarcely saw the direction they drove in. He won- 
 dered, dully amused, whether it would be considered 
 that a discredited clergyman had a right to keep a 
 car given him by people who believed in him. He 
 would not longer have his little rectory, of course. 
 He would not even have honor, except in his own 
 
OF THE CLAN OF GOD 37 
 
 soul. . . . not anything . . . unless reckless, innocent 
 Nancy, believing still, walked out into the darkness 
 with him to a new life. 
 
 He passed into the big country-house like a man 
 going to execution. Entering Whitall's study, half 
 blind, he was surprised to find the old man rushing 
 at him with a triumphant air, shaking both his hands 
 warmly. At Arden's astonished air he fell back, 
 astonished, too. 
 
 "Didn't Miss Deering get you on the telephone? 
 She said she thought you ought to be told more before 
 you came " 
 
 Elisabeth, of all people What had she to do 
 with it? And at that she came into the room herself, 
 just the little dauntless pretty thing of every day. 
 
 "I couldn't get him," she said. "He'd just gone. 
 Miss Whitall's trying. ... Oh, Arden, it's all right! 
 It's all right!" 
 
 "It's all right!" Whitall boomed joyously. "You 
 needn't resign, my lad unless you want to do it be- 
 cause you have something better in view than being a 
 parson; as well you might, after this! You've gone 
 through this in a way that makes me darn proud " 
 
 Elisabeth interrupted again Elisabeth, ordinarily 
 too well mannered to interrupt millionaires or scrub- 
 women. She was clasping her hands joyously, almost 
 dancing with delight. 
 
 "It's all right; Hazel confessed!" 
 
 He was too dazed yet to get it. 
 
 "Hazel what Hazel?" 
 
38 OF THE CLAN OF GOD 
 
 "Hazel is Alfred Parkerman's wife," Whitall ex- 
 plained with what, for him was gentleness. "This 
 wonderful kid has been working all week to get it out 
 of her. And she's succeeded, by Jove actually a 
 signed confession! It's more than I thought anybody 
 could put over," he ended, with a look of man-to-man 
 admiration of the girl. 
 
 Elisabeth dimpled with exactly the same pretty smile 
 as if she were being praised for an efficient Sunday- 
 school class. 
 
 "I never thought I'd manage it," she confessed. 
 "And I couldn't help being sorry, too, for the poor 
 little girl. But I think she was happier after she'd 
 told. She seemed fond of Arden. . . . I I none of 
 Arden's good friends but would have done as much if 
 they could. It was really Uncle Andrew's idea, not 
 mine; he talked it over with me, and told me he 
 thought there might be a chance if I asked Mary Lee 
 if I could come stay with her, and tried hard. It is 
 you who have been wonderful through everything, 
 dear Mr. Whitall. Uncle Jim always speaks so won- 
 derfully of you." She had her old armor of sweet 
 composure on by now; the courteous, trained bright- 
 ness that must never forget to please. But for a 
 minute a real, passionate little determined Elisabeth 
 had peeped through, and Arden looked at her fasci- 
 natedly. He hadn't known there was this sort of 
 thing to her. 
 
 "Well, I won't speak wonderfully of you," Whitall 
 was replying bluntly, "though I've always thought old 
 
OF THE CLAN OF GOD 39 
 
 Dr. Blanton had more brains than he needed for the 
 ministry, now you speak of it. But I tell you again, 
 Miss Deering, if you take that job I have in mind 
 for you, in time you'll be making big money. Young 
 people like you and Garrison shouldn't be fooling 
 away your time and energy on parish work: a boy 
 like Arden oughtn't to be at the mercy of a pack 
 of degenerates every time they choose to write letters 
 about themselves and their fits. I've had an idea in 
 my head about your future for some time, Garrison- 
 As Uncle Andrew had suggested. And an opening 
 from old WhitalPs hand meant a starting point from 
 which either he or Elisabeth could go far. . . . And 
 Nancy Nancy within his reach again? He too 
 for Whitall was a man of his word, even when that 
 word was only a hint would be in that business 
 world, where every ounce of expended energy counted 
 for your own advancement, not for a vague good of 
 indifferent others; where a man like himself, he knew, 
 could go far, Nancy, and being one of Nancy's kindl 
 "Does Miss Whitall know?" 
 "About the Parkerman girl owning up? Why, we 
 only just knew ourselves!" said Whitall in high good 
 humor. "But she's strong for your side, my boy 
 has more views than anybody else except my little 
 secretary-to-be, here!" 
 
 He excused himself, on the frank plea of wanting 
 to tell her, and hurried downstairs to the little room 
 where he knew Nancy would be. As he left them, he 
 saw Elisabeth, having been settled in a chair for 
 
40 OF THE CLAN OF GOD 
 
 further coercion on the subject of the secretaryship, 
 settling her pink skirt daintily so that it was decorous, 
 and explaining again why she couldn't do it. Her 
 small pink and white and golden figure was the last 
 thing Arden saw, against the dark carved background 
 of the high chair. And queerly enough, it was just 
 such a chair that Nancy lounged in when he reached 
 her. 
 
 He always remembered her most vividly as he saw 
 her then, though he saw her for a good deal of his life 
 afterwards. She was more than ever a woodland crea- 
 ture of reds and browns, for her cheeks burned crim- 
 son under her brown skin, and the dull-green of her 
 scant little dress made her eyes and hair seem duskier 
 than ever. As she rose to meet him, almost with a 
 spring, one long gold earring swung hard against her 
 vivid face. He had never seen her when she seemed 
 so alive and forceful. 
 
 "I've come to tell you about this trouble I've been 
 through," he said eagerly as he entered, without other 
 preface. "I can talk to you now. It was too hor- 
 rible, too soiling, for you to be told about before 
 I suppose you've heard scraps of it, but I hope not 
 much not you." 
 
 "It wasn't too horrible!" she said energetically. 
 "Do you think I don't know all about much worse 
 things than that? Everybody does them and talks 
 about them." She came close to him, taking hold of 
 his arms in what was almost an embrace, so that 
 he could feel the fever of her hands through his black 
 
OF THE CLAN OF GOD 41 
 
 coat-sleeves. "Supposing you did do it? I don't 
 care! Those things don't count where a man's con- 
 cerned. Fight it through! I'll stand by you, and 
 tell any lie you like. I'll line up Father, too. And 
 I can swing old Barton Farrell into line, too. He's 
 crazy over me." 
 
 His arms quivered under the burning touch of her 
 hands. But he stared at her as she stood before him, 
 vibrant with her passion of romantic defense. Where 
 had he heard words like those before, about old Far- 
 rell? . . . Yes Bill Parkerman had spoken them, 
 with an evil look. He withdrew from her instinctively, 
 automatically. 
 
 She was frightened at his look. 
 
 "What what is it?" she stammered. 
 
 "You believed I could do a thing like that? You 
 could forgive a man who had been such a creature? 
 You would lie for such a man, use your power over a 
 roue for him, you whom I scarcely thought I could 
 tell about such men and women?" 
 
 She stared at him, hurt and uncomprehending, and 
 he softened, as the human side of it came back to him 
 with a stab. 
 
 "Oh, Nancy, I didn't know we were so different 
 I didn't understand," he murmured. "I'm sorry I 
 spoke to you so harshly. But you don't under- 
 stand, either. You're offering me the best thing you 
 know. Maybe you're too big for me to comprehend 
 too noble. But we won't ever be able to see this the 
 same way " 
 
42 OF THE CLAN OF GOD 
 
 "What do you mean?" she demanded, looking at 
 him levelly; and he saw that it was across a gulf of 
 beliefs and environments that neither of them could 
 ever pass. 
 
 He had stepped unconsciously back into the fast- 
 ness of his ministerial courtesy the manner of his 
 caste. 
 
 "Thank you for what you have said to me. But 
 it won't be necessary. Elisabeth Deering came here 
 to-night to tell your father that she had induced one 
 of the Parkermans to confess that the whole thing 
 was a lie. . . . I you see, I didn't do it, Nancy. 
 It is really true that I did nothing wrong. I can 
 see that, knowing only the things you do, it's natural 
 you should have thought me guilty " his voice 
 broke. He had loved that Nancy who existed no- 
 where now, and it hurt dully to go on talking to this 
 girl who was not she. "But I didn't know your point 
 of view. And you didn't know mine." 
 
 He went out before she could answer. He could 
 not bear to stay in the room any longer. He could 
 hear Elisabeth's voice as he paused before Whitall's 
 door. 
 
 "I don't believe I could," she was saying. "You 
 see, we're a sort of clan all by ourselves, we clergy- 
 people. Even if I did make good I wouldn't feel as 
 if I belonged. And I do belong where I am." 
 
 Arden opened the door and spoke more abruptly 
 than he knew. 
 
 "Elisabeth," he said, "may I drive you back? I 
 
OF THE CLAN OF GOD 43 
 
 want to give you some messages for Uncle Andrew." 
 
 He made his acknowledgments to Mr. Whitall 
 mechanically, and hurried Elisabeth away. He 
 scarcely spoke all the way home: but before he 
 dropped Elisabeth at the Lees' he held her hand close 
 for a long minute. 
 
 "Tell Uncle Andrew, please," he said, "that . . . 
 I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ." 
 
 Uncle Andrew, when he had the message, looked 
 up dreamily from his task, which was at that moment 
 the composition of a letter to a Western bishop whose 
 pet curate, having ramped down into Dr. Blanton's 
 parish with curious ideas about ritual dances, was be- 
 ing painlessly deported to a more advanced curacy in 
 an Eastern city. 
 
 "They'll like ritual dances in that part of the coun- 
 try. Who am I to stop any curate from keeping the 
 old maids of his congregation healthfully employed? 
 though I do think it must be confined to the parish- 
 house," he added. "We're not really ready for them 
 down here. What did you say, Lizzie child?" 
 
 She said it again, flushing a little. 
 
 "Bon Men" said Uncle Andrew with the excellent 
 accent he had acquired in Paris thirty years before, 
 "chasse de race. I hope," he added compunctiously, 
 "that I didn't influence him unduly." Elisabeth 
 opened her eyes wide. 
 
 "Why, he said" 
 
 "But it wasn't so entirely his mother really, it was 
 not so much his mother as his ancestors. I'm afraid 
 
44 OF THE CLAN OF GOD 
 
 he was beyond being anything but a servant of God 
 before he was born. . . . And the Gospel of Christ," 
 said Uncle Andrew over the flap of his envelope, "is 
 after all not such a bad thing not to be ashamed of!" 
 
AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 
 
 "HAVING nephews and nieces," said Dr. Blanton with 
 transparent mournfulness, "is a profession, not a 
 taste." 
 
 Elisabeth Garrison, who was only his niece-in-law 
 by marriage, looked at him wonderingly. Her hus- 
 band laughed. 
 
 "You mean that it doesn't give you much time from 
 your parish, Uncle Andrew?" he said. "Well, we have 
 to go back to ours to-morrow morning, so there will 
 be that much off your mind." 
 
 "I may take the same train," said Uncle Andrew 
 astonishingly, for he was not fond of travel, "going 
 to New York." 
 
 "That will be lovely," murmured Elisabeth, who 
 never asked questions for fear she might stumble on 
 an embarrassing one. Arden had not the same re- 
 straints. 
 
 "What on earth for?" 
 
 "Well, I'm getting to be an old man. And the 
 parish is hurling me forth on a vacation with emolu- 
 ments. If you lived nearer, Arden, I would ask you 
 to keep an eye on my locum tenens; the last one wore 
 such exciting vestments that it was a weary while be- 
 fore my own tamer garments, I fear, really delighted 
 the eye of the younger element again. . . . And I 
 
 45 
 
46 AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 
 
 have my sister Ella's son on my mind. My name- 
 sake. Andrew's letters seem depressed of late. I 
 have thought" Uncle Andrew looked like an eld- 
 erly and gamesome owl for a moment in his effort to 
 express a hint "that there may be a girl. I am 
 very good at arranging young men's affairs with 
 girls. . . ." 
 
 "Andrew shouldn't worry. I hear that that settle- 
 ment-church of his, or whatever he calls it, is pros- 
 pering beyond everything," said Arden Garrison, 
 whose own fashionable little Pennsylvania parish 
 sometimes left him longing for more work to do. 
 
 "Well, well; I just think I'll drop in," said Dr. 
 Blanton. "My horse Horatio's a little on my mind, 
 but perhaps it will do him good to miss me." 
 
 As Fiammetta talked, sometimes haltingly, some* 
 times with a sudden jet of passionate words that 
 tumbled over themselves, Andrew Anthony's eyes 
 turned at intervals to the picture of old Bishop West, 
 over his fireplace. Anthony had not put it there* 
 It was a part of St. John's Memorial that would 
 be there long after his pastorate was done, and after, 
 thank Heaven, the problem of Fiammetta Angelo had 
 ended itself somehow. And any end would be bet- 
 ter than suffering over it as he was, and as Fiammetta 
 was; though Fiammetta, poor soul, had at least the 
 relief of talking about it unceasingly to every one she 
 knew who would stop to listen. Anthony gripped 
 the edges of the table behind him with one nervous. 
 
AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 4 7 
 
 hand. . . . Fiammetta was hurting him horribly. He 
 scarcely paid attention to what she was saying he 
 had heard it all before. 
 
 "An' when I dress up for please John, he say: 'You 
 stupid, you silly! You not like American girl! No so 
 nobby. 7 When I used to put flowers back my ears 
 in Italia he say: c Ah-h, molta bella.' Now if I go 
 buy American hats he not like it. An' not like me 
 be Italiana neither " 
 
 "But, Fiammetta, what can I do?" Anthony de- 
 manded. "I wish John hadn't grown away from you. 
 I will do all I can to help you learn American ways 
 and ideas, and perhaps you can win him back." 
 
 "Win him back!" she said passionately, pushing 
 one hand through her hair with a tragic gesture. "But 
 this day he say ah, he say new things you not have 
 heard. He say 'American divorce.' He say, all 
 wrong to stay marry when all love is gone. He say 
 we no more belong together. He belong with beauti- 
 ful American. They all alike I only an Italian that 
 can't be educated, can't be young no more " 
 
 "Fiammetta! Did John Angelo really tell you he 
 wanted to be free from you and marry another 
 woman?" 
 
 "Yes. He only say what I know long time. I wish 
 I could kill her." 
 
 Anthony's eyes still brooded on old Bishop West, 
 erect and briskly authoritative in his broad gold frame. 
 
 "You mus' stop heem! You are all the pries' what 
 he think anything of. He is ateisto, you know that 
 
48 AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 
 
 He believe in you, because your religion is all take 
 baths, read books, be 'Mericano. You make him 
 stop." 
 
 After she had long gone, sobbing stormily and with- 
 out concealment into her coat sleeve, Andrew Anthony 
 sat in the chair she had sprung from, watching the 
 assured old portrait with troubled young eyes. 
 
 "I suppose you'cl have known how to put this 
 through with colors flying and made some sort of un- 
 holy mess of it from everything but the church angle. 
 . . . And at that you'd be doing more than I can," 
 he said, addressing the portrait. "Good Lord, I wish 
 the days would come back when a man knew he was 
 God's mouthpiece because he'd been ordained!" 
 
 Anthony was the rector of St. John's Memorial 
 Church, and for a man of thirty-two he held an envia- 
 ble position. It was one of those churches which are 
 pointed to proudly as "keeping up with the needs of 
 the time." It had all manner of classes; it had a gym- 
 nasium; it had a room which was at times an excellent 
 neighborhood theater, and gave one-act plays entirely 
 acted by the people of the neighborhood. It also had 
 in Anthony a rector who, in spite of three generations 
 of Episcopal clergy behind him, did not nag his flock 
 about religion. They were mostly atheistic Italians. 
 They appreciated his attitude. They agreed politely 
 that perhaps there was something in what he said, 
 and, meanwhile, they felt free to use the swimming 
 pool and come to English classes. They liked him. 
 Most people did. 
 
AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 49 
 
 He and John Angelo had liked each other thor- 
 oughly, and, in spite of everything, he was drawn to 
 Angelo still. The Angelos had come from Italy ten 
 years before; he a slim, dreaming boy with a beautiful 
 dark face and a passion for drawing after his work 
 was over; she a graceful little wisp of a contadina with 
 the dark prettiness of her sixteen years, and eyes that 
 even for an Italian girl were exceptionally beautiful. 
 At twenty-six, like most of her class, she had lost the 
 woodland grace and the look of youth; only her eyes 
 were lovely still, under the badly chosen American 
 hats. He, at twenty-eight, was fairly on the way to 
 being a big artist. And he still had his dark young 
 beauty. He was a very wonderful product of the 
 Memorial's helping activities. It hadn't spoiled him, 
 unless having outgrown Fiammetta was being spoiled. 
 
 Anthony tried to put himself in Angelo's place. 
 Suppose you were married to a woman who bored you, 
 who hadn't a thing in common with you, who went 
 about weeping shrilly because you loved her no longer, 
 who made irritating little forlorn attempts at winning 
 you back by the wrong kind of cheap clothes. It 
 could happen, he supposed. 
 
 Angelo, besides being a fine painter, had a mind. 
 Fiammetta was not clever, not even understanding. 
 Angelo loved beauty and luxury and civilized stand- 
 ards of living. Fiammetta was not teachable. He 
 mustn't judge. He had no right to judge. ... He 
 must be fairer to John Angelo than he would to any 
 other man, because there was Phoebe Rockingham. 
 
50 AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 
 
 Phoebe was a little darting, vivid hummingbird of 
 a girl. She came down and taught swimming classes, 
 and sometimes took dancing classes when some other 
 volunteer dropped out. She believed in everything 
 and every one so ardently that you hadn't the heart 
 to stop her. And she was sweet oh, she was the 
 sweetest and loveliest and kindest; she talked about 
 freedom and breaking old narrow laws and giving 
 every one the right to broadness and happiness in a 
 way that made it very clear how far she was from 
 knowing that any one could ever misuse any gift. 
 She was too good to believe in the possibility of other 
 people being less pure and ardent and generous than 
 herself. Anthony loved her quite as much as John 
 Angelo did. That was why, when poor Fiammetta 
 had uttered her quite natural wish to kill the woman 
 her husband loved, Anthony had felt his sympathy, 
 in spite of him, going. . . . 
 
 Perhaps Angelo would make Phoebe happier than 
 he could. They always seemed to have so much to 
 say to each other, so much in common. Anthony felt 
 himself to be a slow-minded, unexciting person beside 
 these two. Oh, what was right what was wrong? 
 What should he do, and even if he knew, should he 
 do it? 
 
 But, blessedly for him, it was time to go home to 
 dinner. Afterward he must take his troop of Boy 
 Scouts out for a hike. That group of chattering, 
 black-eyed restless young imps would effectually keep 
 him from giving thought to anything but them. 
 
AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 51 
 
 As he went slowly down the broad stairs Phoebe 
 flashed up them, singing. 
 
 "Hasn't this been a most gorgeous day? I do hope 
 you've liked it as much as I have," she said. "I've 
 been out getting autumn leaves over on the Palisades, 
 with at least thirteen children who never saw a leaf 
 before. It was such fun! They want to make it a 
 mixed affair next week Boy Scouts and you. Want 
 to come?" 
 
 "Do I want to come?" said young Anthony, perhaps 
 a bit more ardently than the occasion demanded but 
 Phoebe was so ardent herself over the smallest thing 
 that it didn't matter. "I want to do it more than any- 
 thing I know." 
 
 She clapped her hands. "It'll be even better than 
 last time, though we said it couldn't be! Don't forget! 
 I've just time for one flying leap from here to the 
 pool." 
 
 She was gone, her swift little feet tap-tapping above 
 him, up another flight. He could hear her voice, just 
 as gaily friendly, just as sweet, greeting some shrill- 
 voiced small child on the stair above, and his unreas- 
 onable heart sank. He knew well the outrush of 
 warmth and friendliness to all the world which comes 
 of caring for some one person in it. It had seemed 
 to him that Phoebe was gayer and happier with every 
 one lately. 
 
 Fortunately there were always things to think about. 
 This Angelo problem was not the only one in his big 
 flock. Anthony concentrated doggedly on other mat- 
 
52 AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 
 
 ters till he was through with his meal; after that the 
 Boy Scouts, as he had foreseen, quite occupied his 
 mind. And then he met Father Doughty. 
 
 Anthony was on good terms with the Roman Catho- 
 lic priest of his neighborhood. To-night Father 
 Doughty greeted him with warmth. "I hear you're to 
 have a visitor who's a friend of mine," he said jovially. 
 "Why did ye never tell me that Andrew Blanton was 
 your uncle?" 
 
 "I why, how could I know you knew him?" said 
 Andrew, naturally. "Do you mean that Uncle Andrew 
 is coming up to see me?" 
 
 "Sure, I must have spoiled his grand surprise," said 
 Father Doughty. "Know him? Sure, you know a man 
 pretty well when you and he and three doctors are 
 doing fifteen men's work in a yellow-fever epidemic. 
 I'm not saying he has the right orders, but if he was 
 a saint when he was thirty it's little likely he's differ- 
 ent now. And that he was and as hard a worker 
 for the souls of the poor as ever any of you young 
 lads with your gymnastics and clinics." 
 
 Anthony smiled. Narrow old Uncle Andrew might 
 be, and pedantic to a wearying degree when you were 
 in a hurry, but he was a good man. It would be 
 rather a comfort to hear one of old Uncle Andrew's 
 long, quotation-larded stories, with their aroma of dead 
 languages, and their associations with petted small 
 boyhood, again here in this place where one had to 
 be so continuously old and wise. . . . Not that Uncle 
 Andrew was a person to look up to, except for his 
 
AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 53 
 
 kindness and sweetness. As Andrew saw him, he was 
 the possessor of an enormous amount of unrelated 
 facts in a dozen languages, and of a quaint pride in 
 pouring them out on any devoted head which might 
 be near and hold itself sufficiently still. He had an 
 elderly buggy in which he made pastoral calls, and a 
 more than elderly rectory in a small town in Delaware, 
 which was covered with books everywhere, except the 
 ceiling. Uncle Andrew's whole life was a peaceful and 
 amiable cross-section of the Eighties; it seemed to 
 Andrew Anthony that Uncle Andrew and everything 
 he stood for were very far removed from life as it 
 actually was. He turned back to his rooms. 
 
 Uncle Andrew was there, sure enough, sitting at 
 ease in the big leather-covered chair, one unpressed 
 trouser leg crossed over the other knee, with his skull- 
 cap and his glasses and his peering, kindly old face 
 and his spotless, well-bred shabby clerical look. 
 He was reading the "Outline of History," chuckling 
 a little as he read doubtless over Mr. Wells' 
 views on Napoleon, toward whom Uncle Andrew 
 was quite amiable. He jumped up nimbly when his 
 nephew came in. 
 
 "You didn't expect a visitation, did you?" he de- 
 manded gaily, in his old-man voice. "But my parish, 
 being, as I supposed, slightly wearied of my well- 
 meant inquisitions ha ha! That's what Dr. Duryea 
 said; he said: 'Andrew, we've tired of you and your 
 old anecdotes! The parish has made up a purse; now 
 get out of this, and don't come back till your cough 
 
54 AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 
 
 is better! 7 And I accepted the rebuke, as I hope, 
 humbly and asked him if I would be allowed to go 
 to the great and wicked city and see my nephew man- 
 aging a bigger parish than ever any of his kin did. 
 And he said I could go anywhere so long as I didn't 
 sit up nights with the sick. I lay it on you, Andrew, 
 to see that I don't sit up nights with the sick. And so 
 I'm here for a few days. After that I've promised 
 the bishop and Kincaid that I'll tell them how to run 
 their jobs for a week or so apiece. You're sure it's 
 quite convenient? If it isn't, I can take Kincaid or 
 Bishop Barrington first. But I wanted to see my 
 boy." 
 
 "You don't know how convenient, nor how glad I 
 am to see you! " said Anthony. He felt again the genu- 
 ine loving-kindness which always pervaded the longest 
 of Uncle Andrew's rambling, whimsical speeches, with 
 their little touch of conscious picturesqueness. Well, 
 in his day they'd had time for all that. 
 
 Anthony stirred up the Italian housekeeper, only 
 to find she had plied the old man with much more 
 food than was good for him. Uncle Andrew always 
 did get looked after, somehow, though he was given 
 to forgetting everything forgettable, and mislaying 
 everything mislayable. 'Nunciata was already trotting 
 around after him with the glasses and pencils and 
 handkerchiefs which he had left in a trail behind him. 
 
 Anthony took his uncle down to an amateur per- 
 formance of "The Land of Heart's Desire" and left 
 him in the front row, making friends by means of 
 
AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 55 
 
 long-winded and sincere praises of the performers to 
 their relatives, among whom he was planted. It was 
 all so innocent and so simple that when Anthony 
 passed downstairs from the gallery where his uncle 
 sat to the less desirable seats where the staff was 
 watching, and was recalled to his problem by the sight 
 of Phoebe, with an adoring Italian flapper on one side, 
 and John Angelo's graceful figure on the other, it was 
 a shock like waking up. He did not think that Angelo 
 was making actual love to Phoebe. But he could hear 
 the two Voices, both eager, both happy, both intent, 
 and see the man's dusky, handsome face looking down 
 into Phoebe's lovely little one, as if they two were the 
 only people in the room. 
 
 "And on the shores of that lake," he heard Angelo 
 saying raptly, "it is all one wash of pure deep color 
 at twilight. One could stand there alone, or with just 
 one person who could understand too " 
 
 No poor Fiammetta could not understand about 
 washes of pure deep color, nor could she stand there 
 with him at twilight and help him understand. 
 
 She was just an honest, earthly, loving creature 
 John had outgrown. . . . Not so loving! 
 
 As Andrew Anthony passed, sick at heart, out the 
 doorway, Fiammetta caught his arm. 
 
 "Do you see?" she whispered. "I tell you, if you 
 do not stop him, make him come back to me, I will 
 be able to bear it quietly no longer." 
 
 Fiammetta had not been bearing it, in the Anglo- 
 Saxon sense, at all quietly. Anthony did not like the 
 
56 AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 
 
 implied threat. He would have to do something with 
 one or the other of them. 
 
 Uncle Andrew chattered happily afterward about 
 the play, and the people he had talked to. He had 
 already sent word to Father Doughty by a canny 
 daughter of Calabria, who managed to keep a foot in 
 both churches, that he was here, and the father would 
 be dropping in to see him next day. 
 
 Anthony tried to be interested and courteous, but 
 the tangle that faced him made him distrait. If Uncle 
 Andrew's wise old astigmatic eyes saw anything be- 
 hind their owlish glasses, he made no sign of it. 
 
 Andrew lay awake most of the night. 
 
 How could he interfere? As man to man, he hadn't 
 the right. And yet things were getting dangerous. 
 Fiammetta was a wild animal under her blue serge 
 suit. . . . Perhaps he could induce Phoebe to stay 
 away . . . and yet, even that wasn't it because he 
 secretly wanted to keep her from Angelo for his own 
 selfish reasons? . . . 
 
 Uncle Andrew had been established in the sitting 
 room, next the study. To him were foregathered in 
 the afternoon, not only Father Doughty, but, later, 
 old Major Briggs, whom it appeared Uncle Andrew 
 had run into after the major had finished his Salva- 
 tion Army meeting the night before. 
 
 They were a contrast, Anthony thought as he passed 
 the door! Uncle Andrew's lean height and half-precise, 
 half-picturesque old figure, his caped coat about him 
 
AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 57 
 
 because of Annunciata's fussing over a draft, little 
 Major Briggs' intense little ordinary weather-beaten 
 face with its straggling sandy mustache, and Father 
 Doughty's suave Irish bulk and twinkling-eyed geni- 
 ality. 
 
 And yet there was a something identical on all three 
 old faces, otherwise so different. Anthony could not 
 place it quite, but it was there, even while they laughed 
 together, light-heartedly, as old men may, over a tale 
 of the father's. It was a something which made An- 
 thony feel left out some way. 
 
 Perhaps it was only because he was young, with a 
 great deal of his suffering still to do, while they were 
 too old to have the realities of life still hurting them. 
 
 When he returned to await the Angelos they were 
 still there. The three old heads were close together, 
 and Uncle Andrew was telling a story now. 
 
 "It took ten years," he was saying matter-of-factly. 
 "He wouldn't even discuss it for five. But he knew I 
 was praying for him. After he had the stroke he 
 seemed to want to see me. The last year he was 
 eager. But he asked for baptism a month before he 
 died; and I have never seen more wonderful faith in 
 God than he showed up to the very end. He suffered 
 a good deal, too but I have never seen any one hap- 
 pier. It was wonderful to see him so close to God, 
 after fighting so long." 
 
 The others nodded, and Major Briggs began to tell 
 a story evidently of the same sort. Anthony went 
 
58 AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 
 
 silently from the door. He had placed the look now. 
 It was assurance shining, steady assurance. They 
 knew something. . . . 
 
 Anthony sat still under the portrait of old confident, 
 portly Bishop West, and waited for Fiammetta and 
 John Angelo. When they came there was a look of 
 triumph on Fiammetta's face at having brought John 
 up to be dealt with, which Anthony thought would 
 have annoyed most men, even if they were not as 
 high-strung as John. 
 
 He looked annoyed almost sullen. She had prob- 
 ably half undone any work Anthony might do by re- 
 proaches or boasts of Anthony's partizanship, as they 
 came along. 
 
 The very contrast of them seemed to point to the 
 hopelessness of any understanding between them. 
 
 John spoke first a little stiffly. "I understand you 
 summoned us, Mr. Anthony?" 
 
 "It's not a question of summons, John. It's a 
 question of something that I think we ought to talk 
 over before you take any decisive step. As man to 
 man. ... It might be better, perhaps, without Fiam- 
 metta." 
 
 "No!" said Fiammetta doggedly. "This is my sor- 
 row. I will know what is said of me." 
 
 Anthony went straight to the point: "John, I under- 
 stand you want to divorce Fiammetta and remarry. 
 Now, that isn't fair to Fiammetta. She's been a good 
 wife to you; she's worked hard, and I believe helped 
 you a good deal in your effort to get where you are. 
 
AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 59 
 
 It's going to hurt her a whole lot. With her attitude 
 to life and her beliefs in general, there will be no life 
 left for her. Won't you, at least, defer any action 
 think it over for a few months more?" 
 
 John answered him unbendingly: "I have thought 
 over everything you have said for much more than a 
 few months. I have deferred action for a long time. 
 I can't see anything to do but this. Fiammetta and 
 I had grown too far apart ever to come together again, 
 long before I thought of remarrying. She is being 
 hurt now by the fact of our relations being what they 
 are, more than she can possibly be after I am gone 
 from her. As for my marriage, that pardon me 
 is surely my own affair?" 
 
 Blank wall. Anthony had spoken as man to man; 
 as man to man John Angelo had answered him. There 
 seemed no way to break through the wall; neverthe- 
 less he essayed again. "]ohn y we've been good 
 friends ever since I came down here. I've always 
 done what I could to help you on the career you've 
 done so splendidly with. My advice has always been 
 pretty good I think you'll admit that. And now I 
 advise you that you're doing the wrong thing. You're 
 not living according to the right ideals the ideals 
 that have carried you so far already." 
 
 Angelo's eyes flashed. "I am making two lives 
 straighter, and leaving one no worse than it is now," 
 he said. 
 
 Fiammetta was sobbing stormily into the skirt of 
 her suit, as if it had been an apron. 
 
60 AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 
 
 Anthony went on pleading; but it was all of no use. 
 The very quietness with which the other man took it 
 all showed that he was far beyond being touched by 
 any argument. As for Phoebe's name, that was skirted 
 sacredly by both of them. And Anthony, always 
 sensitive to the fact of his own love for Phoebe, felt 
 himself bound in honor not to struggle as he would 
 have struggled to keep them apart. . . . And the end 
 was the usual end of all such arguments; Fiammetta 
 lost her fragile self-control and stormed at both of 
 them impartially. 
 
 "You call yourself a priest!" she told Anthony fin- 
 ally. "You are no priest. A priest would say to 
 John: 'You are sinning! You must love your wife!' 
 You say: 'As man to man!' What good is that? 
 What good oh, what good is anything!" She ended 
 in another burst of weeping. 
 
 Angelo looked at his rector. "This is what you ex- 
 pect of me!" the look said. "Come, Fiammetta," was 
 all he said aloud, and followed her out. 
 
 Anthony flung himself forward on the study table, 
 sick at heart. He buried his head in his arms. He 
 felt like echoing Fiammetta's "What good is any- 
 thing?" 
 
 And yet and yet what more could he do what 
 more, as a man and a gentleman, could he have done? 
 
 He felt a touch on his shoulder, and looked up into 
 his uncle's face. But on that face was not pity, not 
 sympathy but contempt. 
 
AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 61 
 
 "I am ashamed of you, Andrew!" said his Uncle 
 Andrew sternly. 
 
 "You wouldn't understand," said Andrew out of 
 the depths of his failure and suffering. "I can't force 
 dogma on them. I haven't it." 
 
 The old man whirled on him as fierily as poor Fiam- 
 metta had done. 
 
 "Dogma!" he cried. "Who asked you to have 
 dogma? I'm not talking about dogma. What I'm 
 talking about is belief belief in God, belief in your- 
 self, belief that you were put here to guide, not only 
 these poor fools' bodies, but their souls or if you 
 don't believe in souls, their morals. What I'm 
 ashamed of about you, Andrew Anthony, is that you 
 don't know your own business, which is leadership. 
 You don't believe in yourself. You apparently don't 
 believe God put you here I don't know that you even 
 believe the vestry called you! What business have 
 you to be at the head of a parish of human beings? 
 Their morals are more your business than their skins 
 and teeth. You don't think that if you keep a dog 
 clean and healthy you're absolved from teaching him 
 to keep his bones out of the parlor. You are wrong- 
 ing these human beings. You treat them worse than 
 you would the dog." 
 
 " You don't understand. It's more complicated 
 than that," faltered Andrew, sitting up and facing 
 the old man. "I don't know how much you heard. 
 But the girl this man cares for happens to be a girl 
 
62 AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 
 
 I care for too. How can I be sure that my motives 
 are decent, if I press him to stay with his wife?" 
 
 His anguished, earnest young face pleaded fpr 
 compassion, but his uncle did not give it. 
 
 "You don't have to be/' he answered uncompro- 
 misingly. "Great guns, boy, don't you know how 
 to be a minister of God? You have nothing what- 
 ever to do, in your private capacity, with guiding 
 these people in your capacity as their leader and 
 clergyman. Your private feelings don't matter. They 
 wouldn't matter if they were tied up with the man's 
 wife. They don't matter as it is. That's plain ego- 
 tism. You don't count. . . . Good heavens, if any 
 of you boys of the younger generation, with all 
 your splendid capacities for service, had half the 
 faith in yourselves and your mission to lead that 
 any little Bolshevik leader has, you'd hold the world 
 steady! You don't know this, and don't know that; 
 and you haven't any faith in the God back of you. 
 You're trying to do it on your own hook." 
 
 Anthony had forgotten his hurt. He was staring 
 at old Uncle Andrew's sternly lighted face. All the 
 old man's easy whimsicality had dropped like a mask, 
 showing the prophet behind. 
 
 "You are in a position of authority," his uncle went 
 on sternly. "You must do one of two things. Either 
 believe that you have been put here to guide these 
 people, believe that God did it, believe in yourself, 
 and do it, with all the faith and selflessness and com- 
 mon sense you've got, or quit. The woman was right. 
 
AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 63 
 
 You have no business to deal as man to man, or man 
 to woman, with your flock. You are God's minister 
 to them. If you can't believe that and make them 
 believe it, go and manage a secular settlement house 
 somewhere. I hear you do it very well." 
 
 Andrew put up his hand. "That'll do, uncle," he 
 said. "You've said enough. You're right. I've failed. 
 I I suppose I had forgotten God." 
 
 But his uncle was not through with him. "That 
 being the case, what are you going to do? You can't 
 leave this thing at loose ends, any more than a doctor 
 could a case." 
 
 Anthony rose wearily. "I I don't know. I sup- 
 pose I can act, as you said, without considering my 
 own part of the affair, inasmuch as I'm quitting," 
 
 The old man touched him gently on the shoulder. 
 "Don't take it so hard, boy. Many a man has mis- 
 taken his vocation for a while before this." 
 
 Anthony sat thinking after his uncle had gone 
 out. . . . Belief in God's appointment of him over 
 these people, belief in himself, selflessness,, common 
 sense he had none of these, but he could at least act 
 as if he had them, for the little while before his resig- 
 nation was accepted. 
 
 He went to Angelo the next day. He did not 
 plead, or argue as man to man. He ordered. 
 
 "You've been behaving in a way that's wrong in the 
 sight of God," he said briefly. "You and I both be- 
 lieve in some sort of God, anyway, and we know 
 that's so. You're to stop. You're to take poor little 
 
64 AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 
 
 Fiammetta out to that place by the side of a lake, 
 where you and she can be alone together. You're 
 to stop feeling that she isn't American enough for 
 you. You fell in love with her when she was Italian; 
 let her stay Italian, not try to be what she can't. 
 You're to stop thinking of the other woman as your 
 wife. You'd no more be happy with her than Fiam- 
 metta is with you there's more fundamental differ- 
 ence of viewpoint between you and Phoebe Rocking- 
 ham than ever will be between you and Fiammetta. 
 You can paint out there. You'll be away from this 
 city life that you Italians aren't used to. You'll have 
 a fair chance of happiness." 
 
 He was violating every rule he had ever laid down 
 for himself in the conduct of his parish. But he had 
 to straighten this thing out in the name of God, he 
 had to straighten it out. He no longer counted. He 
 did not know what would happen. What did happen 
 was amazing; Giovanni Angelo poured forth a flood 
 of half-mad angry words; impossible things, vulgar 
 things, brutal things a harmless enough performance 
 from the point of view of the angry Sicilian peasant. 
 But this thing might have happened some day to 
 Phoebe this impossible thing. His way was clear 
 from then. He went on quietly, using the weapon he 
 knew would be most effective, without any scruple: 
 
 "If you do not take Fiammetta and, without any 
 backward look, try to be happy with her out in that 
 place, wherever it is, which I heard you picturing to 
 Miss Rockingham, I will see to it that the patrons 
 
AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 65 
 
 we have interested in you and your art are interested 
 no more. I will shut you off from everything that 
 makes your success and happiness if you do not obey 
 me. Now choose, and choose quickly." 
 
 He stood in Angelo's little room, outwardly immov- 
 able. Angelo, flushed, hysterical, walked the floor 
 clenching and unclenching his hands, and pouring forth 
 a flood of words partly in Italian and partly in Eng- 
 lish, addressed, it seemed, sometimes to himself 
 sometimes angrily to Anthony. The tension of it 
 seemed eternal. He was stringing himself up higher 
 and higher. Anthony thought he would never stop. 
 
 Suddenly something in Angelo broke, and he flung 
 himself prone on the floor in a flood of tears; angry, 
 loud sobs. And when Anthony bent over him and put 
 one hand on his shoulder he struck it off, sprang up 
 passionately and ran out of the room. 
 
 Andrew Anthony went back to his own place, feel- 
 ing that he had failed. He did not want to see any 
 one in the world, he felt. He wished he need never 
 face Uncle Andrew, in particular, again. But Uncle 
 Andrew no more and no less scholarly and conversa- 
 tional and amiable than usual, was not hard to meet 
 after all. 
 
 When the meal was over, Anthony realized that he 
 had been talking interestedly of his childhood, and the 
 old rectory in Germantown, of wardens and wardens' 
 wives long dead, and children long grown up and scat- 
 tered, and that it had done him good. He had stopped 
 for an hour the eternal facing of the situation, and he 
 
66 AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 
 
 had strength for his next step, which was to deal, as 
 minister to one of his flock in need of ministry, with 
 Phoebe Rockingham, with whom he was deeply in love. 
 If he only needn't, unfit as he was for his work; if 
 he could only quit now instead of after he had seen 
 the vestry 
 
 But perhaps he did not deal the worse with her for 
 having no hope and no future, though it seemed to 
 him that he had done it ruinously, when, heart-sick 
 and aghast, he went out from the classroom where 
 she had been awaiting some of her girls. 
 
 At the first few words her cheeks burned scarlet, 
 and her soft lips closed tight. 
 
 He had hurt her pride horribly, he could see that. 
 It is not an easy thing to tell a woman that she 
 must stop having anything to do with another man, 
 and why. She said very little, as he blundered, relent- 
 lessly on scarcely more, indeed, than "Is that all?" 
 when he had finished, and "I think you are wrong 
 about John Angelo. I am sure he is a good and very 
 wonderful man." After that, she made him feel, his 
 audience was over. 
 
 He went out, baffled, knowing less, he felt, of 
 Phcebe Rockingham than he ever had. Yet of one 
 thing he was sure: she was perfectly innocent, per- 
 fectly noble. If she could go on believing in Angelo, 
 it was because she did not think any one could be 
 otherwise than as good as his highest belief in him- 
 self. And yet 
 
 No one knew where the Angelos were. No one 
 
AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 67 
 
 knew where Phcebe Rockingham was. All that there 
 was to it was that Miss Rockingham had said that she 
 couldn't come down any more. Got tired of it, like 
 most volunteers: that was the paid workers' verdict 
 on it. As for the Angelos, there had been a scene that 
 was worse than usual, and Angelo had gone away. 
 Later Fiammetta had talked with the priest, and the 
 old gentleman who was his friend and some other 
 kind of priest but, oh, a priest of the most good one 
 could see that! and that was the last known. Andrew 
 Anthony, white and forcedly cheerful, went among his 
 flock as he had never gone before, helping, consoling, 
 toiling harder than even the little old Salvationist. 
 
 All he knew was that his uncle said Fiammetta 
 had come and talked to him. He had advised her to 
 go home and try once more for a reconciliation with 
 her husband, and ordered her to stop talking. She 
 had said she would. 
 
 Andrew Anthony called a meeting of the vestry 
 the following week. They were strong-faced, intent 
 men of affairs all; men of the uptown church of which 
 the Memorial Church was an offshoot bigger than the 
 parent. As Andrew Anthony faced them, he despaired 
 of making them understand. He had done well by 
 their work. He had made it show results. They would 
 think he was a quitter. Well, that wasn't his affair. 
 He, who had never run the church as if he was a min- 
 ister of God, had no right to stay there. It was for 
 him to tell them so, and leave. 
 
 "I've called you together to offer you my resigna^ 
 
68 AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 
 
 tion," he began abruptly. "I'm going to give you my 
 reasons for it, as they've been burned into me in the 
 last fortnight; and then, as soon as you can make 
 arrangements for my successor, I'm quitting the 
 ministry." 
 
 There was a murmur of surprise, and he could hear 
 a little rustling and stiffening to attention. 
 
 "We shall be sorry to let you go," said old Mr. 
 Vanderweyde weightily, looking up from under his 
 bushy eyebrows. He was senior warden. "You have 
 done a splendid work with the Memorial. I think I 
 speak for the whole vestry in hoping that you will 
 not act hastily." 
 
 There was a nodding and murmured assent from the 
 others. Then they waited for Anthony to speak again. 
 
 He felt that there was no possibility of making 
 these men, whose lives had been given to practical 
 affairs and worldly things, understand even what he 
 meant. But nevertheless it had to be said. 
 
 "I've been running this church as a business ven- 
 ture," he began. "I've tried to run it successfully. 
 From a business standpoint, I have. Till last week I 
 thought I was a wonder at it. I thought the old idea 
 about being a shepherd and a leader and a father to 
 your flock was sentimental nonsense. I haven't a 
 doubt that most of you remember my saying smugly: 
 'I do not arrogate to myself authority. I am a brother 
 to these people a seeker.' 
 
 "Well, I was wrong. I wasn't even a seeker. I 
 
AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 69 
 
 didn't believe there was a thing to seek I thought I 
 had it all here; I thought that a decreased death rate 
 in the district, and a decrease in crime statistics, and 
 a child or two given a chance at violin lessons, made 
 up the sum of all there was to do. 
 
 "I've learned better. I've been faced with the 
 necessity to lay down laws for the spiritual and moral 
 guidance of these people. And I have found that 
 the things the Bible's full of are facts, not picturesque 
 phrases. The life is more than meat, and the body 
 more than raiment. My people have needed what I 
 cannot give them. Somebody else may. That's why 
 I'm resigning/' 
 
 The ice-blue eyes and heavy white face of another 
 of the vestry turned toward him. 
 
 "We cannot agree with you as to the lack of neces- 
 sity for a lowered death rate and crime rate," he said 
 a little sharply. 
 
 "This ought I to have done' 9 said Andrew Anthony, 
 "and not left the other undone" 
 
 "You are under perhaps a little nervous strain," 
 said old Mr. Vanderweyde soothingly. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "I am, and no wonder. I'm facing 
 the fact that I haven't believed in myself or in God;' 
 and that when the time came for me to enforce spirit- 
 ual and moral laws, my people wouldn't accept my 
 leadership. They were willing enough, as the woman 
 in the case told me, to accept a religion made up of 
 taking baths and learning English! God gave the 
 
70 AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 
 
 leadership of these people into my hands, and I have 
 been a false shepherd. I have failed Him, and failed 
 the church, and made it fail by so much. I I am 
 going. That is all. I shall mail you my formal resig- 
 nation." 
 
 He turned and walked out of the room. 
 
 He walked the city streets that night till nearly 
 morning. The thing was done. And now that it was 
 done, all the regrets and griefs he had not known 
 himself to have, rushed over him. For a little while 
 even the terror and uncertainty about Phoebe faded 
 before the awful sense he had of loss of vocation. 
 Now that he had given it up, he knew how deeply 
 the love of ministry was in his soul. By ancestry and 
 training and vocation he was a priest, a member of 
 the profession which locks its sons to it with a deeper 
 love than any in the world; which leaves something 
 lost and miserable in their souls to the end of their 
 days if they forsake it. 
 
 He did not know it, but his people looked at him 
 with a new reverence as he went through the succeed- 
 ing days, waiting till his resignation should be formally 
 accepted. He was suffering so much that he had no 
 time left to think how they thought of him, or indeed to 
 think of himself at all. All he could think of was 
 Phoebe, when the quiet tying up of loose ends gave him 
 a moment to think of anything outside of the Memorial 
 Church. He had telephoned her house uptown, only 
 to be told that Miss Rockingham was away, and they 
 
AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 71 
 
 did not know when she would return. The tone of 
 the maid who answered him he imagined was re- 
 pressive, as if she had been given exact orders what 
 to tell people. If it had not been for his uncle, An- 
 thony would, he felt, scarcely have had the courage to 
 go through what he was going through. He clung 
 to him as if he were a little boy again. They only 
 talked to each other of surface things. Anthony did 
 not feel as if he could stand anything else. 
 
 Only once Uncle Andrew referred to anything that 
 had passed. "I wouldn't worry about Miss Rocking- 
 ham," he said. "I am sure she is safe, wherever she 
 is, and good. I know you can trust her." 
 
 There was such a certainty in his uncle's voice that 
 Anthony's fears, for the time, were quieted. . . . 
 
 He had come to the point of determining to go to 
 her people and ask about her, and, if he had no satis- 
 faction, taking steps to have her traced, when, one 
 afternoon nearly at the end of his time for staying, 
 he had a short note from her. 
 
 "We didn't finish talking," it said. "Will you meet 
 me at Grand Central this afternoon and go out in the 
 train, and finish what you were saying?" 
 
 The relief was nearly agony. Yet it might mean the 
 worst as well as the best. He knew where to meet 
 her. They had made all-afternoon excursions into 
 the country before this, though it had usually been 
 with a bodyguard of small children. 
 
 She was just herself, flushed, slim, and childlike, 
 
73 AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 
 
 waving to him gaily from the usual place of meeting 
 in the great station. In the delight of seeing her again 
 he forget to ask her anything; their hands clung to- 
 gether and they laughed like children. 
 
 She laughed still as they rode out together. "I have 
 a surprise," she said. "Something wonderful! But 
 I forgot I mustn't tell you. I promised not." 
 
 His heart made one of its agonizing leaps, and he 
 found himself flung into terror again. But he would 
 trust her. He wotdd. 
 
 But they had an hour of wandering in the spring 
 woods before they came to anything but buds and 
 young leaves and an occasional bird or squirrel. An- 
 thony enjoyed himself because of her presence, with 
 a desperate holding fast to the present minute. There 
 might never be any more minutes like it. ... And 
 at last they came to a little brook, and followed its 
 course up to a low gray stone wall. 
 
 "Look!" Phoebe said. A flash of color darted 
 through the wood beyond the wall, and Fiammetta 
 Angelo ran to them, flinging her hands abroad to 
 them both, with a burst of rapid greeting. She was a 
 transformed being. She was dressed in the costume 
 of her own country, and her cheeks were bright and 
 her skin brown with living outdoors. Presently An- 
 thony became aware, through his bewilderment, that 
 she was asking his pardon for being so rude to him 
 before, and thanking him oh, but ten thousand 
 grateful thanks! And they had obeyed him, and done 
 
AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 73 
 
 as the old gentleman he sent to them had said, and 
 they were so happy in the country, and Giovanni had 
 painted already the most wonderful picture! And 
 finally Phoebe with almost as many and as happy 
 words drew him on. "We didn't want to tell you till 
 we were sure it was going to work permanently," 
 she was saying as they sped back to the city. ''But 
 it really does work. I was angry with you at first. 
 You thought things of me that I I didn't like. 
 But I went away to my cousin's place a little while, 
 and thought about it. And you were right. I'm too 
 young to be running around institutional churches 
 without a keeper." 
 
 The eager words on his lips were checked by the 
 vision of Uncle Andrew, waving them eagerly at the 
 station gate with his umbrella. 
 
 "Did you see them? Now aren't you glad your old 
 uncle blew you up?" he demanded eagerly. 
 
 Anthony grasped his uncle's hand. With this won- 
 derful new hope he could almost forget the revelation 
 of his own unfitness that meant that West Memorial 
 was his no longer. 
 
 "Glad" he said unsteadily. "Even if I have to 
 start all over again " 
 
 The two eager creatures beside him cried out, and 
 Uncle Andrew laughed. 
 
 "I left the vestry, headed by Jimmy Vanderweyde, 
 kneeling at my feet in rows like the peers proposing 
 to lolanthe," he said. "They won't take no for an 
 
74 AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 
 
 answer. ... I don't see why they need to have it for 
 an answer myself. YouVe won your spurs, boy." 
 
 Andrew Anthony looked at Phoebe. Her little warm 
 hand came down intimately on his arm, and she looked 
 up at him with a vivid certainty in her face. 
 
 "Indeed indeed you have, Andrew," she said. 
 
WILD WOODLAND 
 
 DR. BLANTON enjoyed, as he did most things in life, 
 being shown over the settlement-church: but his po- 
 litest endeavors could not conceal from his nephew 
 that the people in it, workers and benefited alike, 
 interested him fatally more than methods or appa- 
 ratus. It was a little trying to have him ignore the 
 pride of Phoebe's life, the swimming-pool, in favor of 
 a small and very soiled child on its brink who would 
 not believe that it was best to be washed before you 
 went swimming; it was almost more than trying to 
 find him discoursing in the middle of the library about 
 a fine bit of incunabula found in a Memphis settle- 
 ment house presented, according to his leisurely tale, 
 by a grateful Nuremburg Jew who could not read. 
 
 "It was very instructive," said Uncle Andrew with 
 innocent pride. "I went on the principle that some- 
 where in that ancestry had been scholarship, as the 
 book had always been in the family's possession 
 even though that family was sunk in illiteracy now. 
 People do not believe enough in heredity, my dear 
 children. And sure enough, the second daughter . . ." 
 
 She was now an authority on Greek texts, it ap- 
 peared; but they switched him to the filing-system, 
 where slim, blue-eyed Silence Everington was wait- 
 ing alertly for them. But his reaction: 
 
 75 
 
76 WILD WOODLAND 
 
 "Miss Everington is either a New Englander or a 
 Virginian of practically pure English stock, isn't she? 
 She gives me the impression of having something on 
 her mind. You wouldn't object to humoring my in- 
 quisitiveness to the extent of having her to tea this 
 afternoon, would you, my dear Phoebe?" 
 
 Phoebe squeezed Dr. Blanton's hand. 
 
 "There's no use worrying you you shall see what 
 you want to see, and if you want to watch the wheels 
 go round in Silence instead of in the Settlement, why, 
 you shall! Only there aren't any. The Settlement 
 is the only thing she ever loved I'm sorry to say. 
 Nothing else has a look in." 
 
 Uncle Andrew pulled his little pointed beard and 
 looked wise. 
 
 "I judge, from your connotation of accent, that 
 something or rather some one else does want a slight 
 glance within, did you say?" 
 
 Phoebe clapped her hands. She had the gestures of 
 enthusiasm which become second nature to settlement 
 workers. 
 
 "You shall see! I will produce it this afternoon." 
 
 "It" proved to be a tall, grave, excellently man- 
 nered man named Nicholas Venino; at sight of whom 
 Silence Everington looked at Phoebe with reproach. 
 He had gray eyes, he spoke perfect English, and it 
 came out incidentally in the conversation that he had 
 gone through Columbia and was doing very well in 
 business. Apparently these facts did not have much 
 interest for Uncle Andrew; he was more absorbed in 
 
WILD WOODLAND 77 
 
 talking ethics and politics with him, and watching Sil- 
 ence Everington. 
 
 "I like that boy," he said to her, when Venino was 
 gone. "He seems to have standards; which, of course, 
 are more necessary than collegiate education, though 
 it isn't fashionable to say so." 
 
 "Yes. He has very high standards," said Silence 
 stiffly. She flushed a little, and went on talking, as 
 if she thought she had been too constrained and 
 wanted not to seem so. "He is really a wonderful 
 man. He was a Memorial child. He came here all 
 by himself, they say, not even sent by his mother; 
 and used all the help he got here very efficiently. He 
 put himself through college. He helps the Italians 
 down here a great deal; tries to shake them out of their 
 ideas about well " 
 
 "About the Ten Commandments being merely a 
 decoration, not a code?" interrupted Uncle Andrew. 
 
 "Yes how did you know?" 
 
 But Uncle Andrew only smiled, and began to ask 
 her questions about her forebears. They finally dug 
 up a distant cousinship, through a Master Merriton 
 who had divided his sons between Delaware and New 
 Hampshire. It was nearly dinner time before they 
 parted. 
 
 "Well?" said Phoebe when they were alone. 
 
 "I'm afraid you'll think me romantic which, in 
 fact, I chronically am, my dear. But I think your 
 efficient Miss Everington does not live here at all; 
 but in her dreams. She has 'nostalgic du passe.' I 
 
78 WILD WOODLAND 
 
 confess to having it myself sometimes for something 
 that died when they fired the first shot on a place 
 called Fort Sumter: 
 
 Tor a time now far away, 
 A belief now in its grave ' 
 
 or, I sometimes fear, very nearly," said Uncle Andrew 
 cryptically. He knew nearly everything he had ever 
 read by heart, which made his conversation fuller of 
 quotations than most people were prepared for. 
 
 "But I don't see what vou mean nor what it has 
 to do with her treatment of Mr. Venino," said down- 
 right Phoebe. 
 
 "Curiously enough, I think he may. He struck 
 me as extremely clever, that young man. But of 
 course, when her nervous breakdown takes real 
 shape" 
 
 "What?" said Phoebe. 
 
 "It's only that I've seen other women, of very much 
 her type. A type that is decreasing, by the way, with 
 all its virtues, as it is extremely selective in marriage. 
 Two New Englanders like her, and three Virginians. 
 And, as well as one can judge from her portraits^ 
 Anne Ascue of Bloody Mary's day." 
 
 She was so certain that he was wrong that he did 
 not finish, except to say mildly, "But it does work 
 with horses, you know!" and then diverge courteously 
 to the present-day neglect of Pope's poetry. 
 
 What moved Nicholas Venino, a very silent person 
 
WILD WOODLAND 79 
 
 normally, to deliberately seek an interview with Uncle 
 Andrew, no one could imagine. A whimsical and book- 
 ish old gentleman who continually loses his glasses 
 seems the last person in the world to attract a hard- 
 working young merchant descended from one of the 
 world's most practical races. But nevertheless he did. 
 Perhaps, as Uncle Andrew had said, he was very 
 clever. 
 
 "I saw you were sorry for me," he said quite with- 
 out preface when they were alone. 
 
 Uncle Andrew adjusted his glasses. 
 
 "Not exactly sorry for you. I have a great deal 
 of faith in the power of youth to help itself. But I 
 confess to wondering just a little being a curious- 
 minded old man how you would. You don't mind?" 
 
 The quick answer was more picturesque than an 
 American's would have been, and less self-conscious: 
 
 "What can I do? I have done everything made 
 myself everything that America asks. I could give 
 her all she wanted; I live as she would have me 
 she, with her cold heights! I have made myself, 
 how hardly she will never know, into what I thought 
 she would wish. Not for her sake alone. I I desire 
 what is right. ... I have seen her look with kind 
 aloofness and I know what thoughts under that 
 aloofness at uncontrolled ones of my race. But I 
 am not uncontrolled. I am I think you would be 
 told honorable. I but it is all no use. There is 
 a barrier that she cannot cross, though I have often 
 thought that she would love me if she thought I was 
 
8o WILD WOODLAND 
 
 of her kind. She resents us all, though she works all 
 day very wonderfully to give us help. ... Us ... 
 I suppose that is it. I am one of the slum children 
 to her I would be, if I came with the crown of all 
 Italy or the money of all America!" 
 
 Uncle Andrew's slow answer did not seem to be 
 to the point. 
 
 "Did you ever hear the idea that sometimes you 
 must give a thing up before it really can become 
 yours?" 
 
 "If she could only forget the hills she can scarcely 
 remember from her childhood the ancestors who 
 have been buried so long, who built America, as God 
 knows, I desire to build in this day " 
 
 The old man looked thoughtful. 
 
 "I understand," he said, "that you are a well-to-do 
 young man. What I think you should do is give 
 her back those hills for a little while. She is over- 
 tired now. See to it, without her knowledge, that 
 there is money enough for her to go back to New 
 Hampshire. . . . Perhaps she is right and you are 
 wrong, Venino. There is a lot, after all, in this hered- 
 ity business. You can't always fight it. I'm fond 
 of Delaware, myself; and I don't doubt that the fact 
 that a man named John Blanton liked its looks two 
 hundred years ago and settled there biases me a good 
 deal. . . . It's a big sacrifice, Nicholas you don't 
 mind my calling you that? But as you can't get her 
 to give you what you want, why don't you give her 
 
WILD WOODLAND 81 
 
 what she wants? It seems to me, if you really love 
 her, that's the next best thing." 
 
 "The wall of ghosts would be thicker about her 
 than ever! My last chance would be gone." 
 
 "Nevertheless. . . ." said Uncle Andrew. 
 
 Hill-roads always wind like an adventure, even in 
 the heavy heat of summer; and in September, when 
 the blue haze is beginning to lie across the distances, 
 and the little fresh winds have a stimulating thrill 
 to them. New England hill-roads feel like a path to 
 all the wonderful things one had almost forgotten. 
 They wind a little upwards, and the woodland closes 
 in on either side of them. Here and there an old 
 house, shuttered close because the people who lived 
 there are dead long ago, or moved far west, stands 
 wistfully beside the road, with the hardier garden- 
 flowers still thrusting through the grass and weeds. 
 
 Silence Everington's people had been of this country, 
 but she herself had never known it. She had been 
 brought up in New York, and in her vacations there 
 had always been somewhere else to go; usually, for 
 she worked altogether too conscientiously, and had 
 not much money, a place where she took charge of the 
 summer outing of the little children from her settle- 
 ment. She was a settlement worker, and for the six 
 years she had been following her profession she had 
 lived in it with the missionary intensity of her ances- 
 tors. But this year she was overtired, and the doctor 
 
82 WILD WOODLAND 
 
 had sent her flying to the New Hampshire hills, with 
 orders to forget everything but herself and her pleas- 
 ure. She was staying at a camp, but mostly she took 
 her pleasure alone, wandering up and down the hill- 
 roads and dreaming. She forgot New York and the 
 work she loved so easily that it surprised her. The 
 vague feeling of belonging somewhere else which had 
 always teased her, underneath her busy, intense days, 
 was gone. She belonged here. All her people were 
 gone, but the hills, and the woodland with its blue 
 haze, were here still, and they made her very happy. 
 Sometimes she rode Peter, the old camp horse, who 
 had been the means of teaching so many generations 
 of girls to ride that his attitude to humanity was a 
 scornful and embittered one, and his mouth absolutely 
 hard; more often she went afoot with a little packet 
 of lunch, and a heavy cape in deference to the ideas 
 of Miss Martinson, the head of the camp, who was 
 chronically afraid that everybody would catch cold. 
 The cape was flung over one arm, and sometimes she 
 sat on it in a very damp spot of woods. She never 
 wore it. She was slim and pale, with the transparent 
 skin and deep blue eyes which make people feel that 
 their owners aren't strong, but she was as tireless, 
 ordinarily, as any Silence or Hopestill of her ancestry. 
 She thought a good deal about her people as she 
 walked elastically up a little hill-road this September 
 day, the wind blowing her red-brown hair back from 
 her face, and whipping her cheeks delightfully. They 
 had been a good stock, but they were dead. There 
 
WILD WOODLAND 83 
 
 were no more Everingtons, so far as she knew. And 
 the race would be dead when she died. She was only 
 twenty-eight, but she knew that she would never 
 marry. The man she belonged with the man she 
 should have married well, he wasn't, and that was 
 all there was to it. Some of the girls she knew laughed 
 at her for her attitude; but she held steadfastly to it. 
 If she found him, or if he found her, they would be 
 married. If not and after all, she was not in her 
 first youth any more then she would be the last Ever- 
 ington. They came from all sorts of homes and 
 classes, the girls who worked with her at the settle- 
 ment; from Phoebe Rockingham, whose people were 
 millionaires, to little Stella Karsovian, daughter of 
 Armenian refugees ten years over. But none of them 
 were New Englanders. She said that fiercely to her- 
 self. None of them had her heritage of generation 
 after generation, living sternly and hard in their rocky 
 farms, and always holding high the ideals they had 
 brought to a far country, when coming to it meant 
 hardship and suffering, not a better chance for soft 
 living in a richer land. 
 
 She laughed a little at herself, arguing as intensely 
 about it as if she were talking to Nicholas Venino, 
 instead of safe and alone up in the hills of her people. 
 Nicholas wanted to marry her. And Phoebe said she 
 was silly to fight him off so. He was an Italian from 
 the North country, tall and gray-eyed: grave, too, 
 unlike the chattering swarthy Sicilians she had learned 
 to know first as Italians. He had been a Memorial 
 
84 WILD WOODLAND 
 
 settlement child, in the day before Silence came to 
 work there, when the Memorial was a new thing. He 
 had grown up, one of the boys they pointed to as an 
 evidence of the work they could do. He had gone 
 through Columbia, and he was prospering as an im- 
 porter. Oh, you couldn't say he wasn't presentable 
 but couldn't they see it went deeper than that? 
 All the ideals, all the feelings, all the hopes were dif- 
 ferent. Silence had come up here to flee from Nicholas 
 and his pleadings as much as to rest. She shud- 
 dered now as she thought of his open, passionate, 
 boyish love-making. It didn't make the least bit of 
 difference who was around. And once when she had 
 told him in desperation that she cared for another 
 man, his expression had frightened her. He had got 
 himself in hand quickly, but he had looked so like 
 poor little Vergilio, who had been sent up the day 
 before for slashing his wife Silvia with a razor, "be- 
 cause of her too great beauty and her too loving eyes 
 to others," as he had explained to Silence quietly. 
 
 She shook herself free from settlement memories, 
 and plunged down a wood-path that might come out on 
 another road, in the middle of a village cross-roads, 
 or never at all. She delighted in the adventure of the 
 thing. And even if she got lost, she had lunch and 
 didn't need to get back till nightfall. 
 
 The woods slanted downhill, a close undergrowth 
 of slim young trees. Once she came across the foun- 
 dations of a house, just the cellar and the bricks stand- 
 
WILD WOODLAND 85 
 
 ing up about it. It hadn't been torn or burned down 
 so very long, as time is counted. Where the front 
 yard had been, among an upgrowth of laurel and 
 young trees and bushes, a child's toy, an old-fashioned 
 iron engine, was still half-buried in the earth among 
 vines and flowers. She went on down past it with 
 her eyes filled with irrational, sentimental tears. They 
 had been there too, her people, and they were gone. 
 The wild woodland was taking back what had been 
 snatched from it with such stern toil, so long ago. 
 She hurried on down through the fresh, thrilling air, 
 till she had come again to a spot where it was all 
 woods; down again and still down. She was happy 
 again by now. In these woods she was back at home. 
 She wondered gaily if she was going to find her way 
 out for hours. She didn't care. 
 
 But presently there was another break in the under- 
 growth, and she halted a little, seeing a glimmer of a 
 house through the slender trees. As she came closer, 
 still not quite sure whether she was infringing on 
 private property, she saw it clearly. It was a big 
 white house, Colonial, with the wide low porch, almost 
 on the ground, which she liked so particularly. The 
 garden before it was carefully tended; hollyhocks, 
 tall and glowing, were massed along the porch-front, 
 and the stalks of golden-glow made a hedge within the 
 white palings. There were beds of monthly roses, 
 too, and of old-fashioned white pinks. Up here sum- 
 mer lingered late. It had sprung out of the wood- 
 
86 WILD WOODLAND 
 
 land like a fairy-tale. Behind the house she could see 
 farmland spreading away, fields of corn and of brown 
 earth. 
 
 She paused a little wistfully at the palings, looking 
 in. It was like the places her mother used to tell her 
 of, not the half -deserted, overgrown places she knew. 
 As she stood gazing, an old lady opened the door of 
 the house, and came out to sit on the porch in the 
 afternoon sun. She stood with her hand shading her 
 eyes, tall, white-haired and benignant, looking across 
 the garden to the woodland whence Silence had come, 
 and seeing her, smiled and beckoned: 
 
 "Won't you come up and sit awhile?" she called. 
 "I'm watching for my son to come home. Come up 
 and sit, and watch too." 
 
 Silence opened the gate, with a little difficulty, and 
 came up the walk. 
 
 "I'm glad to see you," said the old lady. "It's 
 lonely hereabouts, though it's beautiful don't you 
 think so? I like to have a neighbor drop in. And 
 who are you, my dear? I don't remember you. But 
 you have a New England look. I am sure you must 
 belong in these parts." 
 
 Silence sat lightly on the porch edge, and smiled up 
 at her questioner, nodding. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I belong in these parts, though my people 
 came away when I was a child," she said. "My name 
 is Everington Silence Everington. My mother's 
 name was Martha Bradford. They belonged here in 
 New Hampshire." 
 
WILD WOODLAND 87 
 
 "Ah, I knew it, my dear ! You have the Everington 
 look. And they named you after the Silence Evering- 
 ton who gave the alarm when the British were coming, 
 over in Zanesbury. I'm a Zane, myself. We remem- 
 ber each other, we old country folk!" 
 
 Silence laughed and glowed. She had nearly for- 
 gotten the story of the ancestress for whom she was 
 named. And nobody else in the world, she would have 
 said, knew or cared anything about Everingtons or 
 Zanes or Bradfords; or cherished useless old legends. 
 
 "I feel as if I had come back home!" she said 
 warmly, looking up at .old Mrs. Zane. 
 
 "So you have, my dear. But you shouldn't have 
 left it. It's all very well to talk about the pioneer in- 
 stinct, but when our ancestors got here I think they'd 
 pioneered far enough. Do you see any one coming? 
 It's time my boy was back." 
 
 Silence looked in the direction she was shown, but 
 saw nothing. 
 
 "Sometimes he's very late," said old Mrs. Zane 
 smilingly. "But he's a dear boy. He always tries 
 to be with me as much as he can." 
 
 Her fine, weather-beaten old face lighted up as she 
 spoke of her son. He must be a good man, Silence 
 thought, if she was so happy in him. He must be 
 old, though, Mrs. Zane herself seemed so old. She 
 visualized him, a tall, strong-featured man like her 
 own father, broad-shouldered, brown, middle-aged, 
 coming across the fields to see his mother, perhaps with 
 a child or two clinging to his hand, or with his whole- 
 
88 WILD WOODLAND 
 
 some wife beside him, as sunset drew near. It all 
 seemed like the sort of thing she had always wanted 
 and never quite believed was anywhere. 
 
 "I think he's coming early to-night," Mrs. Zane's 
 clear, deliberate old country voice broke in on her 
 thoughts. She had forgotten to look with her hostess, 
 but now she raised her eyes, and saw, close at hand, 
 the man they had been waiting for for Silence had 
 been drawn into Mrs. Zane's mood sufficiently to wait 
 almost as eagerly as she. 
 
 He was not like Nicholas. That was the first thing 
 she thought, unconsciously comparing him with her 
 Italian lover. He was something as she had pictured 
 him, tall and broad-shouldered, Yankee-built, but 
 much younger than she had supposed. He could not 
 have been more than a couple of years her senior. 
 He had the shrewd, kindly blue eyes she knew so 
 well eyes with yet a dreaming light in them, the light 
 Silence knew was in her own. As he stood there for 
 a moment without speaking, he reminded her strongly 
 of some one, she could not think whom till he bent 
 and kissed his mother, then looked a little inquiringly 
 at the guest. He was very like an old painting, one 
 of the few things she had kept of vanished grandeurs, 
 an ancestor who had been a colonial governor. It 
 was the same thin, proud, distinguished face, except 
 for the difference made by youth and life. These 
 people were doubtless far-off cousins. 
 
 "This is my son," said old Mrs. Zane, looking up at 
 him with infinite affection, but not touching him, after 
 
WILD WOODLAND 89 
 
 that first embrace, as a more demonstrative woman 
 would have done. 
 
 "This is Silence Everington, David." 
 
 David Zane spoke to her a little distantly, it 
 seemed to her at first. He did not touch her hand. 
 
 Silence had put too many shy people at their ease 
 in the course of her work to mind his lack of cordial- 
 ity. She smiled at him, and taking the first point of 
 contact which occurred to her, asked if they were de- 
 scended from her governor ancestor. The mother re- 
 plied: 
 
 "Yes, indeed didn't you know that? The Ever- 
 ingtons and the Zanes married each other right along. 
 You and David must be cousins two or three times, 
 distantly." 
 
 David interrupted her, affectionately. 
 
 "Now, mother dear, when you get on genealogy 
 there's no knowing when you'll stop. Do you like 
 ancestors too, Miss Everington?" 
 
 Silence flushed and nodded. 
 
 "I hadn't thought about them much, down in the 
 city. But up here it's all come back to me. Com- 
 ing here, finding this lovely old house and both of 
 you, makes all of it seem real; all the people behind 
 me, all the traditions." 
 
 "I have never been anywhere but here," said David, 
 with a note of wistfulness in his voice. 
 
 "Oh, but it is so beautiful! To look over those 
 fields of corn and all the acres behind them, and feel 
 that they have belonged to your people since hun- 
 
90 WILD WOODLAND 
 
 dreds of years, with no change, and no problems but 
 seedtime and harvest " 
 
 "She knows, David! She sees things the right 
 way!" interposed old Mrs. Zane almost passionately. 
 
 He made no answer, except to look at Silence with 
 eyes that she could not but feel were worshipful. 
 
 "Yes, you belong to our people," he said musingly 
 at length. "You belong here." 
 
 His mother spoke again. 
 
 "There are hollyhocks along the stone wall, yonder, 
 planted from seeds brought from England when the 
 Zanes came from the ship to this farm. Show them 
 to her, my son. I am getting too old to move about 
 much." 
 
 She leaned back in her chair, smiling. She seemed 
 very happy. 
 
 The two young people rose, and moved side by side 
 down the walk and over to the long, low stone wall, 
 overgrown by the tall hollyhocks. Clematis was wind- 
 ing over the wall, too, its sweet white flowers knotted 
 in among the hollyhock stalks. Silence bent down and 
 buried her face in the clusters of perfumed, feathery 
 whiteness. 
 
 "May I have some?" she asked, smiling at David. 
 She felt somehow as if she had known David forever; 1 
 as if he were some one she had forgotten about for 
 some strange reason, and just now come back to, 
 happily remembering. 
 
 He smiled back at her, a quiet, sad smile that was 
 familiar. 
 
WILD WOODLAND 91 
 
 "You may have everything that we can give you. 
 You belong to us you have said so," he told her. 
 She knelt by the low wall to break one of the long 
 tangled clematis vines, twisted about stone and flower- 
 stalk, and his hands, close to hers, thrilled her. They 
 were strong, and knotted as if by outdoor work, yet 
 finely modelled. As she made a final effort to break 
 the tough strands of the vine, they touched hers. 
 They were both kneeling by the wall, and they looked 
 into each other's eyes. The blue fire of his met the 
 gray fire of hers. 
 
 "You belong to us," he said again in that low, steady 
 voice like his mother's. . . . "Don't you know you 
 do?" 
 
 "I I think I have come home," said Silence as 
 reverently. 
 
 They were both still for awhile after that. 
 
 He was the lover she had wanted always; the man 
 of her own kind she had wished, half -unconsciously, 
 for, all the years she had been working alone down in 
 the city where things went on, always on and ahead 
 in a swift current. He was here, with the eyes and 
 look and voice of her own people, and he said that 
 she belonged here here where things did not change, 
 where things were as they had always gone. She real- 
 ized, as they rose, still silently and as one, and wan- 
 dered back through the grounds, gathering the flowers 
 and saying scarcely anything to each other, that her 
 expectation of some day finding what she had found 
 had been the only bar to her marrying Nicholas Ve- 
 
92 WILD WOODLAND 
 
 nino. She had been nearer loving Nicholas than she 
 had known. She thought on him now, daring to face 
 her affection for him fearlessly, in her new knowledge 
 of having come home to David Zane. Ardent, good, 
 handsome, successful, forward-looking she had never 
 half done Nicholas justice. She hoped he would marry 
 soon, perhaps pretty Stella Karsovian, perhaps some 
 lovely young Italian girl, if there was one good enough 
 for him. And she looked up at David, striding there 
 silently by her in the sunset, along the narrow path 
 by the corn. 
 
 She never could remember, afterwards, all the 
 things they had said to each other, out there, straying 
 about in the sunset light. Their minds fitted so that 
 it was almost like thinking aloud. He loved her and 
 she loved him, and they had always belonged together, 
 and now they had found each other. Those were the 
 things they told one another. It did not seem strange 
 that it should have happened as soon as they met. 
 
 "It would have been stranger if it hadn't happened. 
 We know we are each other's. Why pretend it isn't 
 so?" David said, echoing the thought in her mind, as 
 they paused a little in the last rays of the sun, by 
 an old stile. 
 
 She turned and looked up at him, and he swept 
 her into his arms. They stood locked together, for- 
 getting time and space, in that last wonderful light 
 of sunset. 
 
 How long it was before she drew away from him 
 she never knew. It seemed suddenly dark, and across 
 
WILD WOODLAND 93 
 
 the chilly darkness she heard a scream his mother's 
 voice. It shook her from her trance, and she fled 
 back through the corn-path, across the lawn, stumbling 
 as she went over stumps and vines, back to the old 
 house, outdistancing David. She ran, panting, around 
 the corner of the house and up on the porch. It was 
 dark and lonely, but she could see Mrs. Zane, scream- 
 ing and struggling, her arm held by a rough-looking 
 man. She remembered with a thrill of harror how 
 lonely it was here, how shut about with undergrowth 
 excepting on the side whence she had come. 
 
 "David! David! Hurry!" she cried, as she sprang 
 up on the porch, and tried to wrest the old lady from 
 the man's hold. He dropped the thin arm he held, 
 at once, and began to talk vehemently in a broken 
 English that she could hardly follow. 
 
 "She no come in I have to make her come in, or 
 she sit here all night," was what she thought she 
 made out, interspersed with a language she thought 
 sounded like Portuguese or Spanish. It sounded to 
 Silence like a ridiculous excuse. He had been about 
 to maltreat the old lady. Oh, if David would only 
 hurry! Could it be that he had not heard his mother 
 scream, and had walked on in another direction 
 that she would have to stay here and contend with 
 this man she was afraid of? 
 
 "I must wait for David! I must wait for David! 
 I tell you he was here to-night! I must wait for my 
 son! Tell him, Silence, that David will be back 
 soon!" said Mrs. Zane piteously. 
 
94 WILD WOODLAND 
 
 Silence did not know what to make of it. 
 
 "It cannot matter to you whether Mrs. Zane waits 
 till her son come in," she said, addressing the man. 
 He answered her in a flood of words she could not fol- 
 low, pointing excitedly first to the house and then to 
 Mrs. Zane. And as she listened to him in perplexity, 
 she heard, with a throb of thankfulness, a man's foot- 
 steps hurrying around the house, and, turning, saw 
 his shape coming up the two low steps to the porch. 
 She ran to him, and had caught his arm, thinking it 
 was David. Then she recoiled in astonishment. Close 
 to him, like that, she could see that it was Nicholas 
 Venino Nicholas, whom she had depended on to do 
 things she wanted done for years. She was too glad 
 of his protection to be surprised that he was there. 
 Even if David delayed a little it did not matter now. 
 
 "Thank heaven I've found you!" said Nicholas, 
 keeping hold of her as if to reassure himself. "You 
 could never have found your way back alone. What's 
 the matter here? Are you helping some one in 
 trouble, as usual?" 
 
 She had forgotten how comfortable it was to turn 
 to Nicholas for help. 
 
 "This man is trying to do something to Mrs. Zane, 
 here. I can't understand him. Her her son will 
 be back in a minute. I was trying to protect her." 
 
 "Of course you were, if there was anything to pro- 
 tect, little Saint Silence!" he said. "But I don't think 
 anything is wrong. They told me about this place 
 at the camp, when I came up to find you. The man 
 
 
WILD WOODLAND 95 
 
 looks after her. He and his wife live a little way from 
 here, and take care of her and do her work. Perhaps 
 I could understand him I know a little Spanish." 
 
 Silence, frightened and mystified still, heard Nicho- 
 las question the man rapidly in Spanish, and listen 
 attentively to his patois reply. He nodded, when the 
 man had done, and turned to Silence again. Mrs. 
 Zane, meanwhile, had sunk back into her chair and 
 was peering through the darkness again. 
 
 "It is as I told you,' 7 said Nicholas. "This old lady 
 lives here alone. This man and his wife, who is in 
 the kitchen now getting her meal, are paid by a rela- 
 tive of hers, a man who lives in the far west, to look 
 after her. It was getting dark, and too cold for so 
 old a woman to stay out on the porch. He was try- 
 ing to get her to come in and eat something. But she 
 was insisting on staying here to watch longer. He 
 says that sometimes for days she does not give any 
 trouble. To-night was a bad night." 
 
 "But but I don't understand," Silence faltered 
 again. "Her son and I went down through the corn- 
 field, for a walk in the sunset. We were standing by 
 the stile together when I heard Mrs. Zane scream. 
 I ran; I thought he would follow. I don't understand 
 why he isn't here. He he must be here in a moment. 
 She is only watching for him. Aren't you, Mrs. 
 Zane?" 
 
 It was too dark for her to see the look of shock 
 and surprise on Nicholas' face. She waited for the old 
 lady's answer. 
 
96 WILD WOODLAND 
 
 "You see!" Mrs. Zane said triumphantly. "I told 
 you he came sometimes never, never when people do 
 not believe in him. He came to-night, and talked with 
 Silence. Let me watch a little longer only a little 
 longer!" 
 
 Nicholas drew Silence to him quickly, but not as a 
 lover would; more as if she were a child he must 
 guard. 
 
 "Listen, my little one," he said gently. "There is 
 no son. Miss Zane has never married. Listen hold 
 still try to believe! I understand this man might 
 understand we are Latins. But never the people at 
 the camp. You were incantata there is an English 
 word for it wait glamour. She threw over you the 
 belief that is so strong in her " 
 
 "But I saw him! I saw him!" cried Silence, strug- 
 gling to escape Nicholas' sane, strong hold. "He had 
 the face of the picture in my room." 
 
 "Yes, of course! You made him as you wished 
 your dream have I not known for long that your 
 dream was my only rival? Listen, Silence! You 
 must listen! These things occur to people sometimes. 
 You must not disbelieve in what I tell you because it 
 is outside your experience. I will tell you the story 
 of Miss Zane, and what must have happened to you. 
 She was born in this old tumble-down house. All her 
 people had been born there, for about as long a time 
 as since my great-grandfather's father came from Cala- 
 bria to Piedmont. It seems a long time to you Amer- 
 icans. The land grew infertile. Many of her people 
 
WILD WOODLAND 97 
 
 were dead because of the Civil War, and because of 
 too much intermarrying. So what were left went 
 away. Her lover went, and wanted her to go. But she 
 loved the worn-out land and the house better than to 
 follow the future in a new part of the country, and 
 she stayed here alone. And living all alone, all she 
 thought of was the race that would die when she died. 
 I do not know how women come to these things. I 
 suppose she wished so for the son she would not 
 have, that she finally built herself a son in her imag- 
 inings. . . . You have heard of that happening? . . ." 
 
 "Yes," Silence faltered. She could not believe Nich- 
 olas, yet. 
 
 "Yes. So much you will believe. You must be- 
 lieve the rest, or it may be very bad for your 
 mind. . . . You were tired, and you too were wrapped 
 in your memories of that past which has made this 
 poor old woman what she is. You went down through 
 the woods, and you, wrapped in your strong thoughts, 
 met this old Miss Zane, who has sat thinking creat- 
 ing about herself a vision of her son that she wanted, 
 strongly too, for many years. The mind of a longing 
 woman is a very strong thing, because it is she, after- 
 all, who is the creator. Oh, believe me, my dearest! 
 I saw you at the stile. I saw you fling your arms 
 up in the empty air, as if you embraced. I saw you 
 turn and run, though I did not hear the cry I was 
 too far. There was no one there" 
 
 "There was no one there? . . ." Silence echoed, 
 shrinking back against Nicholas. She felt suddenly 
 
9 8 WILD WOODLAND 
 
 tired and weak, as if she had been under a fearful 
 strain for hours. Then she cried out. "Oh, Nicholas! 
 I saw him! We loved each other! Oh, you are tell- 
 ing me that I am mad! I saw him I saw him!" 
 
 Then she stopped, staring through the dark at the 
 old woman, who was huddled in her chair, with a 
 shabby shawl about her shoulders, that the Portuguese 
 had brought her when he had failed to make her 
 come in. She had caught an echo in her own voice 
 of the note in Miss Zane's. 
 
 "You saw him, certainly," Nicholas told her again 
 patiently. "You were not mad. So my uncle saw 
 his mother once, who was dying far away, and longed 
 to see him. You saw her thought, and your thought, 
 as you see a picture on a movie screen. It spoke as 
 you and she would have had it speak. . . . Come 
 away, beloved! You are too good, too strong, too 
 intelligent, too loveworthy, to live in the barren past." 
 
 "But I felt his love ... he loved me " 
 
 Nicholas laughed, for the first time in the anxious 
 moments he had spent there. 
 
 "It was my love you felt. . . . Come, dear! You 
 can do nothing here." 
 
 The old woman was rising to her feet feebly, of 
 her own accord. 
 
 "I suppose I must go in," she said. "He will come 
 soon. Stay and watch for him, my dear. Pietro is 
 right, I'm too old for the night air. ..." 
 
 As the tall old figure was framed in the lighted 
 doorway, where Silence could see the busy, hurrying 
 
WILD WOODLAND 99 
 
 form of Pietro's wife going this way and that, busy 
 about the house, she saw, too, with a thrill half pity, 
 half terror, that the house was weather-stained and 
 crumbling. The shaft of light showed, too, that the 
 roses she still held in her hand were blighted and 
 awry with a generation of neglect, and that the yard 
 was weed-grown. The palings, even, showed un- 
 painted and with great gaps between. And where she 
 had thought there was a smooth, gravelled walk, that 
 too was almost obliterated with neglect. Her own 
 skirt was torn as if it had been dragged through 
 undergrowth. She turned to Nicholas, the only 
 stable thing in a terrifying world, and he led her 
 mutely down the steps, and in the direction where 
 the cornfields had been. As he raised his hand, with 
 the flashlight in it, to show them their path, she saw 
 that the cornfields, too, had been a thing of glamour. 
 It was all wild woodland. Nicholas held her more 
 closely and understandingly as he helped her through 
 the open stile. 
 
 He said nothing more until they were within sight 
 of the camp. Then he bent down to her again. 
 
 "Those people of yours, they came* to a new land 
 because they were brave and strong and good. They 
 did not stay in the old, because their fathers had 
 lived there. Silence, this is a day when your country 
 needs you as it never has before needs you to be 
 brave and strong and good, too, and to marry and 
 have children who will carry on the fight against 
 wrong beliefs, and wicked men and women who want 
 
ioo WILD WOODLAND 
 
 to wreck our country. You have said that you be- 
 lieve in me I think you would have loved me before 
 this, if it had not been for your dream-lover. 
 Silence? . . ." 
 
 She looked up at his dark, regular-featured face, 
 with its look of love and kindness, and thought of 
 the other face the one so like the portrait she loved. 
 She was very tired, and very lonely. And she knew 
 that all Nicholas had said was true. 
 
 "If you will be patient a little longer " she fal- 
 tered. 
 
 He laughed triumphantly. 
 
 "If you will give me so much I can hope the rest!" 
 he told her gaily. "And now think of it no more, my 
 dear. There is the light, and you must be very tired 
 and hungry by now." 
 
 She would never escape from Nicholas' love now, 
 and she knew it. She was content. She even smiled 
 piteously up at him, resting gladly in his hold as he 
 half led, half supported her up the porch of the camp 
 house. But she held tight to the withered branch 
 of clematis in her hand. 
 
THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 
 
 "Bur I thought/' protested her uncle, "that you were 
 safe in Maine with Phoebe and Andrew? Not to 
 speak of ... am I too rash in saying . . ." 
 
 "Not so long as you haven't said it," his niece 
 Sydney answered, enveloping him in a masterful 
 embrace which he took with evident pleasure, but a 
 little rocking Sydney was very strong. 
 
 He settled his glasses more tightly and looked at 
 her as she released him. It was more or less the un- 
 spoken code of the family as a whole, through most 
 of their connection clergyfolk trained never to be 
 off guard, to laugh if there was any danger of feel- 
 ing like crying. Sydney, her cheeks flushed through 
 the French army tan that had never quite worn off, 
 and her dark eyes unnaturally bright, laughed, and 
 her uncle lifted his eyebrows. 
 
 "I see," he mused, rushing in where he alone could 
 tread with Sydney, "that I was too rash. 
 
 "That name shall be silent 
 And silent his fame. . . ." 
 
 "I didn't mean to be tragic," said Sydney, rather 
 ashamed of herself and her implied transgression of 
 Uncle Andrew's belief that one's sense of humor 
 should not die even in one's troubles. "But I've 
 
 IOI 
 
102 THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 
 
 broken off with Frederick. And I do not want to 
 talk about it. I want to stay with you, please, Uncle 
 Andrew! I've sworn off the world." 
 
 "Even in this remote backwater, where by the 
 large number of genuine Americans remaining you 
 may see how far from modernism and progress we 
 are/' said Uncle Andrew, giving a hobby a furtive 
 airing, "the world exists. Every one here, my dear 
 niece, is wearing his or her flesh, though, as we have 
 had a hot summer and a decree of fashion, rather less 
 than of yore. I confess to still having a personal 
 liking for curves in the female. And wherever the 
 world and the flesh have a rendezvous, there, alas, is 
 our old acquaintance the Devil. But to such peace 
 as I have and as you can get when your friends 
 down here discover you you are welcome, my dear. 
 The touch of masterfulness which you acquired partly 
 from Our Army in Flanders I may say and partly, 
 I fear, in the natural reaction from a minister's home, 
 combined with the touch of desire to change others 
 for the better which we all, alas, possess in our 
 clan. . . ." 
 
 "I wasn't in Flanders," said Sydney, quite herself 
 by now, "and you're entirely lost in that sentence. 
 But you're a duck to have me." 
 
 "That," said her uncle, "is a quotation. There is 
 an article called "The Land of Lost Allusion," which 
 I should like you to read, my dear, when you have 
 unpacked. An intelligent little article, referring to the 
 
THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 103 
 
 fact that literary references are lost upon the rising 
 generation." 
 
 But when she had run upstairs to unpack he stood 
 still in the middle of the room, staring at the third 
 volume of Boswell's Johnson, by a triumph over his 
 housekeeper left at peace on the carpet three days 
 now. 
 
 "Too bad," he said. "From what I heard of him, 
 I liked Frederick. But perhaps . . ." 
 
 Something up in New York City was annoying Mal- 
 colm Shore badly, and he could not imagine what it 
 was. He had an excellent leather business, which 
 was doing much better than, considering the times, it 
 had any business to. It was pleasantly near time 
 for him to take his usual train out to the at- 
 tractive suburb where he lived with an equally at- 
 tractive wife. She would meet him at the station in 
 their very good car, with a selection of their three 
 pride-worthy children on its back seat. There would 
 even be time for a game of tennis or so at the club 
 before dinner. The club was good. So would be 
 his partner; and the dinner. There was no uncer- 
 tainty about the whole excellent program, unless it 
 might be the personnel of the children on the back 
 seat. . . . And yet something bothered him. Some- 
 thing was irritating the back of his mind, nibbling, 
 fretting. 
 
 Presently it focussed itself on two impossible rea- 
 
104 THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 
 
 sons; old Bill Gorman's wedding-cards and the big 
 picture his secretary kept so accurately and so well 
 dusted always on the same place on his desk. . . . 
 He must get a new picture it was absurd to have 
 faced the same smile and the same evening frock on 
 the same Marjorie for five years now. Besides the 
 children were getting bigger. He must tell her to have 
 a new one taken. ... As for his classmate's marriage, 
 why that added to the general feeling of the staleness 
 of things he couldn't imagine. There had been an 
 epidemic of marriages and engagements among his 
 contemporaries lately; he had been enveloped in an 
 atmosphere of true love. He himself had been mar- 
 ried ten years; older men were apt to instance him 
 complacently when they advocated early marriages. 
 He had been twenty- three and Marjorie twenty-one. 
 
 Now, these ten years later, all was very well and 
 prosperous with them, and with Junior, Barbara, 
 Peter, Laddie the collie, the bungalow and the car. 
 Marjorie had named the children according to the 
 fancy for quaintness that had come in about their 
 time. Malcolm always let her do the naming little 
 things like that were what made your wife happy. 
 Marjorie and Malcolm were very happy together. 
 
 He shut the annoying photograph in a desk-drawer 
 impatiently, shocking his neat, middle-aged secretary 
 a little as she tiptoed by. She liked him, as most 
 people did. And he "made no advances," she was 
 wont to say. He wasn't that kind of a pup, he 
 would have said himself if the matter had come up. 
 
THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 105 
 
 He was, indeed, a very decent and lovable fellow. 
 
 The feeling of annoyance staleness irritation 
 whatever it was clung around him through subway 
 and train. Even when he saw his car waiting at the 
 station, Marjorie's little gloved hands on the wheel. 
 
 It was all exactly as he had known it would be, and 
 yet it didn't lift his spirits. He had even remembered 
 rightly on the way out that it would be Junior and 
 Barbara on the back seat to-night, because they had 
 hung up their coats for a week without being told, 
 and Peter hadn't. Laddie waved a well-known sorrel 
 tail and gave the well-known ecstatic welcome, and 
 Marjorie's pretty waved brown head leaned out the 
 sedan window with just the bright smile Marjorie 
 always had when she welcomed him. It was all nice. 
 It was very nice. 
 
 And yet the something jarred and fretted still. It 
 wasn't nerves or overwork, because he asked the doc- 
 tor, and the doctor laughed in his face. 
 
 "You're a perfect ox, old man," he was told. "Not 
 a thing the matter with you. I'll go this far with 
 you, though; you need a while out of harness. Drop 
 your work for awhile, or if you can't do that, go take 
 charge of another branch. Send your kids to a grand- 
 mother and you and Marjorie go off for a little honey- 
 moon." 
 
 It sounded like a good idea, and he talked it over 
 with Marjorie. But she couldn't manage it, so far 
 as she was concerned. 
 
 "I've promised that paper on Masefield for the 
 
io6 THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 
 
 Woman's Club. And there's the paper-hanger com- 
 ing next week. The guest-room simply must be done 
 over you know we agreed on that before Lucille 
 Marcus comes on the visit she's planned. . . . Oh, I'd 
 forgotten how near that was! There's only ten days 
 between the decorator and her getting here. That 
 wouldn't be worth while even if I got out of doing the 
 paper on Masefield. And Junior has to be taken in 
 with his teeth twice a week " 
 
 It was plain there was no chance of untangling Mar- 
 jorie from her routine. She was very sweet about it, 
 and tried honestly to plan for an escape somewhere, 
 but the threads would not untwist, and she could not 
 bring herself to cutting them. Shore was for making 
 a clean sweep of decorator, visitor and Masefield, and 
 letting Junior's teeth stay unstraightened for a couple 
 of weeks more. But it was no use. He suspected 
 Marjorie of being a little afraid of the camping trip 
 he had suggested. He had never been able to get her 
 to go camping. She was a dainty little soul, uncom- 
 fortable unpowdered and unwaved and away from 
 bathtubs; and she disliked leaving her children. But 
 she was, as always, sweet about his going. If the 
 doctor said he needed a change, why, he would doubt- 
 less get more of one alone. And perhaps things would 
 straighten out later, and she could join him. 
 
 She was certainly a dear little thing just the same 
 dear little thing she had been ten years ago. On the 
 train going to Delaware Malcolm smiled at the thought 
 of her slim little white over-manicured hand waving 
 
THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 107 
 
 him good-by, with the handkerchief picked up in the 
 exact middle, "like a steel-engraving," he had used 
 to tease her in the days of their engagement. Just so 
 she had used to wave him good-by the summer before 
 they married. The same hand, the same gesture. . . . 
 
 He leaned back in his chair. The doctor had been 
 right it was a relief to slip everything off his shoul- 
 ders for awhile. Down in Delaware there would be, 
 beside the nearly negligible business he was looking 
 after, he had heard, excellent shooting. His associate 
 there was putting him up at the Country Club for the 
 length of his stay. Sounded pretty good all around. 
 
 It was. He drove ahead with his business in a 
 way which did not seem to brace up the overwork 
 theory. He flung himself into the country club round 
 with a zest he had scarcely known since his college 
 days. He rose in the morning looking forward to 
 the fun life was going to be; and enjoyed himself gen- 
 ially till two in the morning, usually, with unabated 
 vigor. He said to himself that he wished Marjorie 
 could have cut loose from all her fool things and 
 come with him. He was honestly unaware that it was 
 the dropping of all his responsibilities, those of a hus- 
 band and father among the rest, which were making 
 him feel so buoyant. 
 
 It was the third afternoon of his stay, and he had, 
 for a wonder, a free moment. He had been reading 
 one of Marjorie's nice little letters, with a funny 
 scrawl inside from Peter. He had been smiling over 
 it, taken back for the moment to the atmosphere of 
 
io8 THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 
 
 his home, and wishing the little chap were with him. 
 Then he thrust it in his pocket, and stared out into 
 the road. And he made the rueful discovery that his 
 old nibbling restlessness and vague want of something 
 had only been lying in wait, patient till he should have 
 a quiet moment. He wanted he didn't know what 
 he wanted. . . . 
 
 Certainly not to have an elderly man in a caped 
 coat sit down on the window-seat beside him with a, 
 little chuckle of comfort, switch on a light which de- 
 stroyed all the gloom so comfortable to grouse in, 
 and begin to read aloud to him without a shadow of 
 excuse. 
 
 "Here it is!" said the elderly gentleman with an 
 innocent triumph. "The Eternal Return of Nietzsche, 
 two hundred years before that poor soul ever learned 
 his own mountainous language, in an English jest-book 
 of the sixteenth century!" 
 
 He peered amiably at Malcolm over the edge of a, 
 pair of bifocal spectacles as he began to read. Mal- 
 colm did not know whether, by reason of blindness, 
 the old gentleman took him for a bosom friend, or 
 was merely electing him one. He wished he hadn't 
 pounced on him. And yet one couldn't be rude to the 
 old soul. He was so like, as he read earnestly on 
 with comments of his own, something you'd read about 
 and never expected to find. . . . Oh, well, the type 
 doubtless did exist still in far-off country towns the 
 charming, discursive old-school manners that most 
 people have no time for, the enormous, leisured, futile 
 
THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 109 
 
 scholarship the whole atmosphere of a life spent far 
 from the hot realities of the present, of anything that 
 had happened later than the slow-going, amiable, petty 
 eighties. . . . 
 
 As the old gentleman read and talked on, Malcolm 
 began to feel that he had known him for at least ten 
 years. He began to remember his dead father. Yet 
 his bluff, gay father hadn't been at all like this gentle 
 old soul with his half-winning, half-amusing air of con- 
 stitutional helplessness. Midway in his discourse on 
 Nietzsche he introduced himself, in a half whimsical 
 parenthesis, as the rector of the little church of the 
 place 
 
 "Andrew Blanton by name, very much at your serv- 
 ice, sir." 
 
 So he was elected, not mistaken, for a friend. Dr. 
 Blanton, he discovered as time went on, was given to 
 doing that to most of the world. He took it for 
 granted, as a child does, that people were quite as 
 interested in him and his tags of scholarship, as he 
 was in them and whatever they did, and he was some- 
 how rarely disappointed. It was a comforting glam- 
 our that the old man cast about him. Malcolm sank 
 into it restfully. 
 
 He found himself being led away in the direction of 
 the book-lined rectory to a running dissertation on 
 English humor, quite as a matter of course. The man 
 who had put Malcolm up at the club encountered them 
 at the doorstep, and seemed quite to understand the 
 procedure. 
 
no THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 
 
 "I didn't suppose he would escape you long, Uncle 
 Andrew," he said with a mock-mournfulness and a 
 very apparent affection. 
 
 "Only going home with me for a little while," said 
 Uncle Andrew, looking a little guilty and dropping 
 his spectacle-case, which his friend retrieved for him 
 in an accustomed manner. He dropped it into a capa- 
 cious black bag with a draw-string, dropped the bag 
 itself, had it restored, and finally achieved his home 
 without more than three following mislayings of prop- 
 erty. 
 
 He established Malcolm in an eaved bedroom, of 
 which not the least charm was that the books lining 
 it quite overflowed on the light-stand and nearly on 
 the bed. Then he wandered off, and could be heard 
 being lovingly reproved by a rich female darky voice 
 in the distance. 
 
 Malcolm laughed to himself. It was all so relax- 
 ing, somehow. He strayed downstairs presently, read- 
 ing with avid interest as he went an elderly green book 
 on the crimes of the Mormons, and sat himself on a 
 verandah he found to await Dr. Blanton's remembering 
 him again. There was no hurry. 
 
 Nearly an hour went by before anything else hap- 
 pened. Then the screen-door made a noise, and when 
 he looked up a tall girl was walking out of the house 
 with a pair of tennis shoes in her hand. She sat down 
 on the steps, quite unembarrassed by her unshod 
 feet and a braid of thick dark hair over her shoulders, 
 and began to lace on the shoes. 
 
THE MOMENT OF REVOLT in 
 
 "I'm Sydney Anthony. Dr. Blanton's my uncle," 
 she told him with her uncle's immediate friendliness. 
 She was not exactly pretty, measured by the stand- 
 ard of Marjorie's carefully groomed prettiness. Her 
 amused scarlet mouth was too large, and her dark eyes 
 large too had a tilt down at the corners that was 
 fascinating, but irregular. Her white skirt and middy 
 made her look younger than he afterward learned she 
 was; not more than seventeen or eighteen. Her voice, 
 in contrast to her carelessly intimate manner, was 
 very soft and caressing, with a light note of mockery 
 in it. "Are you the Mr. Shore he's taken admiringly 
 to his breast? Thought you were quite staid and old 
 he said, before he left to visit the afflicted, that 
 you had a genuine talent for the appreciation of six- 
 teenth century humor." 
 
 She went on with her shoes, doubled lithely over 
 her task. 
 
 "I hope he's taken me to his breast," said Malcolm, 
 laughing a little, "but I can't swear to the rest." 
 
 They both laughed again. There was a wind of 
 something that came with her which seemed to blow 
 away the vague boredom and impatience he had felt 
 so long. He felt suddenly freed, comfortable, as if a 
 dryad had stepped casually out of her tree and begun 
 a conversation. 
 
 "Then he expects you to stay the night. In fact, I 
 don't think you'll get back to the club again for some 
 time." 
 
 Malcolm protested politely, though in his heart he 
 
ii2 THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 
 
 hoped what she said was true. He fitted here, some- 
 how. 
 
 "Oh yes, you will. People generally do what Uncle 
 Andrew wants them to." She straightened up from 
 lacing her shoes and leaned back against a pillar. 
 "I'm going to play tennis; that's why I'm wandering 
 about in pigtails. That is, I am when Uncle Andrew 
 gets back from Mary Murray's rheumatism. Till 
 then, being a lady on my uncle's gallery, I entertain 
 you. . . . I'm sure 'entertain' was the word." 
 
 Somehow her mockery freed him still further. 
 " 'Entertain' is the word. I hope you realize your 
 duty." 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 "I always seem to have to do my duty when I'm 
 around Uncle Andrew. He's of an insidious virtue. 
 Otherwise I seldom do, I hope." 
 
 "If you cut out the tennis and went motoring with 
 me instead would it be doing your duty or avoiding 
 it?" he demanded on an impulse. It was so long since 
 he'd had impulses that he liked having one. Of 
 course she wouldn't do it. Women and their network 
 of unbreakable little plans! 
 
 She looked up, her white teeth flashing. 
 
 "Avoiding it delightfully! It's just the hour for 
 a drive, and I can tennis every day. Wait. I'll call 
 up Josephine-Lou, and be with you toot sweet." 
 
 She leaped up, this friendly stranger, and dove into 
 the house like a boy. He could hear her at the tele- 
 phone. By the time he had gone to the garage and 
 
THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 113 
 
 come back with his car, she was ready. He tooted for 
 her boyishly, and she ran immediately out, a white 
 tarn pulled down over her ears and a jumper instead 
 of a middy over her white silk skirt. She tossed a 
 sweater into the car deftly, and came down the steps 
 lighting her cigarette. 
 
 "Very fast and very far!" she demanded. "It will 
 feel much more like a dereliction of duty if you go 
 fast. But we'll combine virtue with pleasure. I hap- 
 pen to know that Uncle Andrew wants some autumn 
 leaves for the chancel." 
 
 "Very well. They can grow quite a distance off, 
 can't they?" 
 
 "They do," she informed him, her teeth flashing 
 again. She gave him a lighted cigarette, as his hands 
 were busy with the wheel, lighting herself another, 
 without being asked. Something in the matter-of- 
 courseness of the act suggested to him that she had 
 been overseas, and he asked her. She nodded. 
 
 "Yes, a year and a half," she said. "Entertainer, 
 though, not brow-smoother. I sang for them. I 
 wouldn't have missed it for anything. It was a decent 
 life heaps of hard work, and no problems to worry 
 over." Her brow knotted for a moment. He smiled 
 secretly. A kid like that with problems on her mind! 
 . . . She couldn't be so much of a kid, though, if they 
 let her go over with the Y. 
 
 "You get over?" she asked in turn, before he could 
 wonder further. 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
ii4 THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 
 
 "Wife and three children/ 7 he explained, glad it 
 could be slipped in so easily, "and worse than that, 
 the government decided that I was an expert on 
 leather. I spent a glorious and warlike year inspect- 
 ing saddles." 
 
 She smiled, and said what a chum would have said. 
 
 "Hard luck!" 
 
 He hadn't cared so much for these overseas girls, 
 as he'd run into them time and again. He said, as 
 most men did, that the life had rubbed off something 
 made them arrogant, sexless. But this friendly, 
 poised young creature, with her man-to-man attitude, 
 and the girl's piquancy under the comradely under- 
 standing well, he liked her a lot, just as he would 
 have liked an instantly sympathetic man-friend. You 
 didn't have to talk across to her as you did usually to 
 women pick your ideas. He wasn't man to her; he 
 was a human being and a friend. He settled into the 
 situation with the feeling of relaxation and comfort 
 one's body feels in a comfortable chair. 
 
 Uncle Andrew had remembered him by the time 
 they were back from their drive with a earful of yel- 
 low and scarlet leaves. And Sydney was quite right. 
 He would not hear of any such thing as Shore's return 
 to the Country Club. He despatched a lurking suitor 
 of the black cook's for Shore's belongings, rode down 
 his faint objections amiably, and launched on some- 
 thing which he evidently considered of more impor- 
 tance than any possible objections Shore seemed to 
 remember faintly afterwards that it was John Milton's 
 
THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 115 
 
 attitude to political economy. They sat out on the 
 verandah afterward, the three of them, belonging most 
 intimately, and talking about unimportant things that 
 were very interesting. Sydney and Malcolm Shore did 
 more of the talking after dinner. Uncle Andrew had 
 a way of diving in for references in books, that some- 
 how did not break the thread of things at all. 
 
 Malcolm Shore found himself talking, that first 
 evening, a good deal about Marjorie and the children. 
 He didn't exactly want to do it, either. Something 
 seemed to be driving him to. He realized afterwards 
 that he had been doing it to make himself feel decent. 
 If Sydney liked him in spite of his having a wife he 
 lived happily with, he was playing fair, and could go 
 on with this new wonderful friendship. For Sydney, 
 though she happened to be a woman, was the friend 
 he had, without knowing it, been lonely for a long time, 
 he knew. She had things for him that no one else 
 had ever been able to give. He had for her, too, it 
 seemed. Their minds sprang together and their cheeks 
 flushed with the excitement of this immediate kinship, 
 as he remembered his mind had sprung to meet the 
 minds of one or two of his mates in college days. It 
 would be a lifelong friendship, perhaps. Marjorie 
 would like her as much as he did, surely. She made 
 friends more easily than he did, anyway. 
 
 They carried Uncle Andrew off for a long drive next 
 day, ignoring his protests about parish duties. Sydney 
 had not been staying with him long, it appeared, and 
 on the strength of her being an infrequent guest de- 
 
n6 THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 
 
 manded his society. Her brother was a clergyman 
 also, (it seemed the profession ran in the family) and 
 he had married the daughter of a rich New Yorker, 
 who owned something he called a camp, but which 
 was more like a country estate in the Canadian woods. 
 Sydney had been staying up there with her brother 
 and sister-in-law and some other guests of theirs, till, 
 as she explained, the luxury, together with one or two 
 other things, got on her nerves. 
 
 "It's all very well for Phoebe and Andrew," she said, 
 "they work like dogs when they're in the city, and if 
 they want to rough it on flowery beds of ease it's only 
 sensible. They don't take time for much of that sort 
 of thing at home. But I don't live in the slums, and 
 when I camp I want to camp, and come back with 
 rapture to a porcelain bathtub. But well, I suppose 
 I wouldn't have stayed even if that particular camp 
 had been as primitive as Davy Crockett's." 
 
 Her eyes darkened, and for a moment her face 
 looked drawn and tired. Then it lighted again with 
 her accustomed careless gaiety, and she began asking 
 Malcolm ridiculous riddles about Mary Christmas and 
 Benny Dictine. 
 
 She loved the woods as much as Malcolm did. She 
 was back again on the subject at their next dinner- 
 table conversation. She knew a camp where things 
 were primitive enough to suit her, and yet not uncom- 
 fortable, she said, and she was planning to go up 
 there alone in another two days. 
 
 "I was going to take Uncle Andrew along, but He 
 
THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 117 
 
 was hard enough to detach from his sick people any- 
 how, and now I verily believe he's added you to 
 the menage for an alibi," she said teasingly. "It will 
 only defer your doom, let me tell you, Uncle Andrew." 
 
 But Uncle Andrew said cheerfully, "Now, my dear 
 Sydney, you are putting the old man in a very embar- 
 rassing position. Mr. Shore will presently feel that I 
 am about to put him forth in let us say a hypo- 
 thetical snowdrift. On the contrary, I am not so far 
 crushed by your tyrannies as to have to resort to alibis. 
 If I wished to go with you, which I do not, I would 
 suggest to Mr. Shore, who has told me that he has been 
 recommended a change, that he make a third of our 
 party!" 
 
 He ended with his little high laugh on a note of 
 childlike triumph. And Sydney got up and ran 
 around to him, and kissed him exactly as she would 
 have kissed a child. 
 
 "Why, you lamb, of course you would," she said. 
 "He should take anybody along he wanted to, so he 
 should, except a smallpox patient, maybe." 
 
 Uncle Andrew looked embarrassed, the fact being 
 that he had spent three indomitable weeks last summer 
 isolated with a colored family whose unreasonable 
 dread of hospitals had been too much for his heart. 
 But he didn't like it mentioned. 
 
 Malcolm made a bold stroke. Afterwards he won- 
 dered how he had the courage, but at the moment it 
 seemed to him that he wanted to go on living with 
 these two delightful people so much that he must do it. 
 
ii8 THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 
 
 "Let's all go, then!" he said boyishly. "Come on, 
 Uncle Andrew I beg your pardon, Doctor Blanton, 
 but it seemed so natural." Dr. Blanton beamed. 
 "Always Uncle Andrew to my friends, my dear boy," 
 he said. "But" 
 
 "But now your last link's broken," said his niece 
 firmly. "Us for the woods." 
 
 It all seemed very impromptu and wild, when Mal- 
 colm came to think of it afterwards. But it was actu- 
 ally decided, Uncle Andrew struggling feebly, for he 
 hated making starts, though he always enjoyed him- 
 self after he had been shoved into starting. 
 
 "You're really doing me a favor," Malcolm told him 
 persuasively. "I wanted to go badly, and I hadn't 
 the nerve to do it alone. I've been horribly restless and 
 nervous lately, worrying my wife's life out of her, I 
 expect." 
 
 "I think," said Uncle Andrew, gazing at him over 
 his thick spectacle with a steady mildness, "that the 
 trip will be the best thing in the world for you." 
 
 The unworldliness struck Malcolm later. Not many 
 old gentlemen would have encouraged a young mar- 
 ried man to go on a trip with him and a handsome 
 young niece, he thought. Of course he was safe, but 
 lots of men wouldn't have been. Not with that wonder 
 of a Sydney. What a brain she had, and what woman- 
 liness! Underneath the careless, almost scornful way 
 she had of facing facts, almost flinging them at you 
 if you like, you could feel something strong vibrat- 
 ing. . . . Passion and intelligence, and tenderness 
 
THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 119 
 
 look at her half-laughing devotion to the old uncle, 
 who must be something of a trial sometimes with his 
 half -consciously whimsical absent-mindedness and 
 strength and looks to boot. Queer she hadn't married. 
 Men liked her enough; there were sufficient of them 
 haunting her footsteps even down here, he had seen 
 already. They weren't the sort of men she ought to 
 marry, though. But there wasn't much danger of 
 her throwing herself away on them. She was patently 
 untouched by any of them. ... He was not jealous 
 he had no right to be. Still it was an added pleasure 
 when the three of them were finally on their journey 
 together. 
 
 "It isn't often one finds two friends not just 
 acquaintances, but actual friends in one house," he 
 told her musingly, from where he sat facing her in 
 the canoe that bore them on the final stage of their 
 trip. "They're rare, you'll know when you get to 
 be my age people you can be your real self to with- 
 out stopping to think.' 7 
 
 "Without making yourself over for the moment, or 
 holding parts of you back so you'll adjust decently to 
 the other person. I know," she said, her erect head 
 and shoulders vivid even beside the scarlet sunset and 
 deep, serene blue water they were silhouetted against. 
 "I've had let's see just two since I left college. 
 You're the third." 
 
 "College?" He had not thought her so old. 
 
 "Yes. I'm twenty-seven." She was always con- 
 trasting with Marjorie; not to either woman's disad- 
 
120 THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 
 
 vantage; only with a sense of the curious differences 
 in women. Marjorie always hid her age as if it was 
 a disgrace. Sydney passed that as unimportant, to 
 come back to the fact of their friendship, smiling a 
 little in the red light. "And you don't know how glad 
 I was to find you all waiting for me! Yes, we really 
 are friends. If we were both girls or both men it 
 would be just the same. And do you know, I did 
 need you. I've been through something well, a bit 
 hard just lately." 
 
 She was the most divinely honest creature and 
 how she knew! 
 
 "I needed you too," he said, "just that way. A 
 friend like you, man or woman." 
 
 They landed then, and he helped her ashore, giv- 
 ing and receiving a warm handclasp that went through 
 him in a strong current of courage and pride and 
 delight. . . . Uncle Andrew, clinging to the cape-coat 
 which no representations as to the superiority of 
 sweaters had been able to tear him from, got stiffly 
 from the other canoe and stood a moment, staring out 
 over the great sweep of tranquil water to the blue 
 stately hills far beyond. 
 
 "Oh, ye mountains and hills, bless ye the Lord; 
 praise Him and magnify Him forever!" he murmured, 
 his thin old peering face lighted for an instant with 
 a radiance which made Malcolm regard him curiously. 
 He heard Claude-Camille, the hairiest of the big 
 guides, say something in French to 'Tiste, the other 
 one. 
 
THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 121 
 
 "C'est la bonne chance; c'est un homme saint" 
 was what he thought it was. Shore had not thought of 
 kind old unpractical Uncle Andrew as particularly 
 holy. But he did seem to bring good luck; at least, 
 his presence greased the wheels as it always did. Un- 
 usual care always seemed to surround the old gentle- 
 man from whatever quarter. He was beside the 
 younger people in a moment, making a leisured quo- 
 tation from Horace about simplicity, capped by an 
 amiably scornful remark about the factitious simplicity 
 of camp life with two guides to wait on one. Whereat 
 Sydney hugged him irrelevantly and flashed down the 
 path, like a slim boy in her sweater and knicker- 
 bockers, in pursuit of some wood-thing she thought she 
 saw. When Shore laughed at her for the vanity of 
 her chase she snatched his cap and was off again, he 
 after her. They were like two happy, wild children. 
 
 It was Arcady and Arden, with, by grace of Uncle 
 Andrew, a touch of the Groves of Academe. Life went 
 with the tingling exhilaration it always has in the 
 Northern woods in the Fall. Living had never been so 
 complete, so effortless, so delightful. Sydney was 
 merely like a good pal sometimes; there were other 
 times when she was like a little girl, and Malcolm 
 found himself giving her the amused tenderness he 
 had for his own small Barbara. Sometimes she was 
 an elusive, very wise and thrilling woman. Always he 
 wanted to be where she was, always to learn more 
 about her, though she had a frankness he had never 
 known a woman could dare have, and seemed to pour 
 
122 THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 
 
 herself out to him as willingly and constantly as he 
 did to her. 
 
 In the evenings they sat by the camp-fire with 
 Uncle Andrew, in that content, relaxed intimacy which 
 only camp-fires can give in perfection. And still Mal- 
 colm thought it was only comradeship. Until there 
 came a night when 'Tiste claimed calmly as a right 
 and Uncle Andrew accepted it the same way the old 
 man's ministry to a sick woman down the lake, and 
 the two guides paddled him down. 
 
 Malcolm and Sydney were left alone in the tingling, 
 pungent-scented evening, the dusk and the great silent 
 woods and the great fire their only companions. They 
 talked on for awhile, and gradually ceased talking, in 
 a measureless content. Presently Sydney sprang up 
 to put more wood on the dying fire. It was one of 
 her boyish ways never to ask men to do such things. 
 As she bent across Malcolm her long thick braid, 
 fragrant of the sweet wood smoke and of pine, brushed 
 his face. 
 
 He reached up and caught her wrist as the wood fell 
 on the fire. Suddenly flame ran from her hand to 
 his; they were in each other's arms without knowing 
 how they had done it. They held each other tight, 
 kissed passionately. It was supremely right, supreme- 
 ly wonderful. She was everything Malcolm Shore had 
 need unknowingly for years. She was understanding 
 and fulfilment. . . . Presently they drew a little from 
 each other, and sat on hand-in-hand, talking in low, 
 
THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 123 
 
 half-laughing voices about the wonder fulness of the 
 thing. It was one of those high and magical hours 
 which come only once or twice in a lifetime. They 
 parted finally with a last close, certain embrace which 
 seemed already one of those things which had always 
 been and would always be. 
 
 They greeted each other with the same certainty 
 when they met next morning, and walked frankly 
 down one of the wood-trails together, to sit in a little 
 green-dappled clearing, walled close by pines, and 
 talk of the thing as it was, unafraid. 
 
 Sydney faced the thing as he put it to her with her 
 divine bravery. He tried to give her honesty. He 
 tried to be just to Marjorie, still with the old double 
 consciousness that it was something that would have 
 jarred on him somehow in another man. He was in- 
 tent on clearing his soul. And Sydney accepted what 
 he said with her comradeship and honesty, just as he 
 gave it. Or so it seemed. 
 
 "But isn't it right I should give up the lesser for 
 the greater, Sydney?" he said. "I gave Marjorie some- 
 thing I can never give another woman, perhaps. I 
 want to acknowledge that. We must face it without 
 pettiness. But you and I have something to give each 
 other that we could give no one else. It's the great 
 thing the lifetime thing." 
 
 She flung back her head, to look into his eyes as 
 they stood breast to breast. 
 
 "Mind and soul and body " she said. It seems 
 
124 THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 
 
 real to me the most real thing I ever knew. . . . 
 Oh, Malcolm, are you sure? We mustn't hurt that 
 poor woman unless it's worth it." 
 
 "Do you suppose I'd shake the very bases of my 
 life if it weren't worth it or ask you to, you, the 
 most wonderful and perfect thing God ever gave me? 
 Isn't it worth it?" 
 
 She dropped her little proud head on his shoulder 
 with a shudder that was nearly a sob. 
 
 "It's a big tide sweeping us away the biggest tide 
 that ever rose. We'll be brave we'll go through the 
 necessary things, I suppose because of the bigness 
 of our belonging together. It's the great thing." 
 
 "The great thing the lifetime thing," he said again, 
 and they were silent. 
 
 They came down the little wood-path into the clear- 
 ing around the tents, as they had gone, openly hand- 
 in-hand. Sydney smiled into his eyes and went on 
 with her buoyant step to find one of the guides for 
 something. Malcolm turned toward his own tent, to 
 find that Andrew Blanton stood facing him in the 
 entrance, his kind old peering face hurt and per- 
 plexed. Malcolm faced him quietly, even proudly. 
 The exaltation still held him. 
 
 "Let's talk about it," said Uncle Andrew gently. 
 
 They sat down on the camp-stools by the tent 
 door. 
 
 "There isn't much to say," Malcolm said steadily. 
 "We love each other, and we're going to be honest 
 about it." 
 
THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 125 
 
 "You have a wife and children," Uncle Andrew said, 
 his face still wistful and hurt. 
 
 "Yes, and I love them. I'll always love Marjorie in a 
 way. But I've outgrown her. I know now that I 
 went away from her because the tie between us was 
 beginning to be impossible. It would be worse for 
 her to go on being married to me, feeling my weari- 
 ness of her, than for us to have a clean break. She's 
 pretty and sweet, she'll marry again. But Sydney 
 and I well, we're mates." 
 
 "How do you know you're Sydney's mate? How 
 do you know you're not, fundamentally, of your own 
 wife's ideals and viewpoints?" 
 
 Malcolm shook his head, smiling. The proposition 
 was so absurd. 
 
 "I don't know," said Uncle Andrew sharply, "that 
 anything can have turned you into a man of Sydney's 
 generation. My impression is that you're no excep- 
 tion to the rule that there's fifty years between all the 
 rest of us and these young people of the war. You 
 don't seem to me in the least like Sydney's mates as 
 I've run across them, outrageous young imps that they 
 are! My experience of your kind, which is long if 
 not wide, gives me the impression that you are simply 
 passing through the moment of revolt which comes 
 once to every married man." 
 
 The peering whimsical old face had changed all in 
 a moment. Why had he never seen, till now, behind 
 that mask, the stern wisdom of an unafraid shepherd 
 of souls? For it had always been there. The dim 
 
126 THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 
 
 old eyes pierced down deep into him. He sat silent 
 as the old man went dominatingly on. 
 
 "Once to every married man," he repeated. "I 
 have never known one it didn't come to, harder or 
 lighter. Some never admit it to themselves. Some get 
 it lightly little flirtations. Some get it hard. Harder 
 than it deserves. . . . Oh, I know, boy don't you 
 suppose I'm a man myself? You've seen the men 
 your age footloose to mate, all around you " (How 
 had he known about Bill Gorman's cards, and Arthur 
 Watson's engagement, and . . .) "You've been wild to 
 run with the herd, and the natural instinct of the male 
 to wander has helped you. And on top of it you've 
 found one of the women you would have married if 
 you'd been free. . . . Oh, it's natural: as natural as 
 murder. It's instinct. We all want to murder people 
 at times, but we don't do it. If you hold hard it will 
 pass." 
 
 "It isn't instinct," Malcolm countered furiously. 
 "It's my mind, my soul, all the better part of me. The 
 physical thing's there, but it's secondary." 
 
 "Your instincts are lying things," said Andrew 
 Blanton. "They can always make the mind, which is 
 much younger than they and pitifully trusting, believe 
 anything. There's one chance in a hundred that this 
 thing between you and Sydney is the great real thing. 
 There are ninety-nine that your moment of revolt has 
 merely found you close to one of the half-dozen women 
 you could genuinely Itrve. But you took your road ten 
 years ago. It's a coward's way to strike down another 
 
THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 127 
 
 one, because it seems easier. If you take your side- 
 road with Sydney, you may be forming a habit of strik- 
 ing down all the other cross-roads you are bound to 
 come to from time to time. You may get into the habit 
 of doing it every ten years, or perhaps only every five 
 or two. I've seen that happen. What you plan to do 
 is to lie down on your job. In your heart your wife 
 comes first. Go back to her." 
 
 He turned and walked away, leaving Malcolm feel- 
 ing as if a storm had swept him, so great was the 
 power and personality which had been loosed on him 
 from this old man he had loved, to be sure, but loved 
 amusedly, as one would a child. The thunder of the 
 words still vibrated in him. ... It was not true. It 
 was none of it true. Things were still what they 
 had been. He walked in the direction Sydney had 
 taken, to get back the high exaltation of their mood 
 together. . . . But Sydney had gone off on the water, 
 or somewhere else, and he was faced instead by 
 Claude-Camille, who spoke immediately in his very 
 bad and incongruous Maine English. 
 
 "Ain't no letter. Nobody got none but M. le cur. 
 You was lookin' for some, wasn't you?" 
 
 He had been expecting, with a little shiver of dis- 
 taste, another of Marjorie's conscientiously-mailed 
 little letters, with its inevitable catalogue of furnace- 
 men and tennis-games and children's small brilliancies. 
 It was exactly time, counting the two days and the 
 canoe-trip, to bring mail. But she hadn't written. . . . 
 The little thrill of relief he expected did not come. He 
 
128 THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 
 
 felt lost, somehow. And suddenly he was faced by 
 the fact that up till now he had unconsciously, while 
 loving Sydney, as he thought, with everything in him, 
 been still having a life constructed with Marjorie for 
 a base. Could it be that the affection for her was so a 
 part of him that he didn't know it to be there? . . . 
 That was foolish. The old man had said what old 
 men have to say, indeed, he had been more kind and 
 unconventional than most in his place would have been. 
 He had shaken him. ... He and Sydney had faced 
 the great step now; and if he did not feel a wrench 
 at the idea of giving up the wife he had lived with 
 for ten years he would be a brute indeed. But what 
 he had said to Sydney was true must be true. Their 
 love was the great thing, the thing that counted, that 
 was worth breaking things for. ... He wished she 
 would come back to him, so that in her warm, brave 
 presence the chilling thoughts, the ridiculous little un- 
 happiness because Marjorie hadn't written Marjorie, 
 who wrote like clockwork! would slip from him. He 
 went off through the woods alone, hoping to come 
 across her. But though he searched all the places 
 where they two had played together, he could not find 
 her. He had brought lunch along, and when noon 
 found him too far from camp to make it, he ate it 
 where he was, and went on hunting, as one hunts 
 sometimes in a desolate dream, for Sydney. When 
 he found her about five, and they clung in each other's 
 arms, it was a heavenly wakening. They went back 
 down the narrow trail in the old way, stopping some- 
 
THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 129 
 
 times to laugh or tease or kiss. . . . and yet something 
 was different something was strange. Sydney seemed 
 different. He knew it was his imagination, that the 
 difference lay in himself, but he could not stop feeling 
 that it was in Sydney. 
 
 There were two days more of this troubled rapture.. 
 Uncle Andrew was his old gentle, whimsical self. He 
 said nothing more; you would have thought it a wild 
 dream that he had ever said anything, to hear him 
 relating at relishing length a quite preposterous legend 
 about a trout and a saint named Audaldus, or quoting 
 Isaak Walton verbatim from his unbelievable memory. 
 The third day Sydney called Malcolm Shore to come 
 with her, in a way that he knew he did not imagine 
 was strange. 
 
 "I can't go on keeping still any longer," she said. 
 "I want to talk to you about things." 
 
 "I thought we'd done all the talking there was^ 
 darling," he said. \ 
 
 She shook her head and beckoned him to their tryst- 
 ing-nook with the pine walls. She put up a guarding 
 hand as he bent to take her in his arms. 
 
 "No. If you touch me I can't say what I want 
 to it's hard enough, just with you near me. ... You 
 are so dear." 
 
 Her voice was scarcely audible. He stood from 
 her, the vague feeling of something wrong taking 
 visible black shape in his mind. 
 
 "There are things to say to you to tell you. You 
 told me about your wife. I didn't tell you that before 
 
130 THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 
 
 I came down here I'd just broken my engagement, 
 nor why." 
 
 She stood against a great pine, her hands clutched 
 behind her on it as if it gave her strength, a slim 
 Rosalind-like figure. She was very white under her 
 brown. 
 
 "I loved him . . . terribly. He'd done something 
 unforgivable, I thought. We'd been apart a long time 
 he had to be off on business. And when he came 
 back, when it seemed I'd never loved him so much be- 
 fore, some devil came and said he'd kissed another 
 girl. I asked him, and he said yes. He said there 
 was no excuse for it, but he wasn't going to be any- 
 thing but honest with me. We'd started on that basis. 
 He said all the usual things about its never happen- 
 ing again. He said he'd thought I'd understand, that 
 I wasn't the usual kind of woman who couldn't. He 
 had been dishonest in his bargain, and he wanted me 
 to know it. He said that some day the tides might 
 get me, and I'd understand. He'd thought I'd under- 
 stand, maybe, anyway ... I didn't. I was just the 
 usual old-fashioned angel-cat female with a hurt pride. 
 I smashed things, and came to Uncle Andrew's. . . . 
 I've been thinking these last three days, and I think 
 I understand now. The tides have caught you and 
 me, too. And all things as they are, I believe I must 
 go back to my lover. Because I can understand now, 
 I think. He said that after this he'd be strong against 
 the currents, if there were any. I didn't know what 
 he meant then. I do now. I must go back, and we 
 
THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 131 
 
 must go on playing fair, and keeping each other out 
 of the tides' way. I think we can put it through. I 
 think that's the sporting way. This isn't." 
 
 He stood staring at her numbly. 
 
 "But I thought you loved me/' he said tonelessly. 
 
 Her hands clutched the tree harder. "You said a 
 man could love two women at once. I suppose it 
 must be possible to love two men. I have the love. 
 It flows to you now. If I go back, I think he will 
 come first again. I think there's just love. Oh, it's 
 hard, it's horribly hard! But I believe this thing 
 came to me so I could understand, and go back to 
 him. I think I must. It's the straight way for you 
 and me." 
 
 He cried out jealously, catching her in his arms 
 with a rough strength; "You do love me, Sydney! 
 There couldn't have been all this wonderful thing 
 between us if you didn't care." 
 
 He felt her arms tighten about him, and her head 
 dropped helplessly on his shoulder. "Don't hold me! 
 If you do I will want to stay too much. Be merciful, 
 Malcolm!" 
 
 His hold slackened for a moment automatically at 
 her words, and she pulled herself from him, and ran 
 down the path. He began to follow; but she was 
 among the men busied near the tents before he could 
 reach her. He paused at the wood's edge, and turned 
 back to the little hallowed place inside the thick pines, 
 and dropped down on their log to face it all. It was 
 not hopeless yet. He could have her if he would fight 
 
132 THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 
 
 her for herself, and he would fight. . . . Then sud- 
 denly he saw that he could not. Half his forces were 
 on her side the field. He felt helpless, inert. Pas- 
 sion, mental oneness, the sense of youth renewed; 
 they were with him in his fight. But against them 
 
 Once to every married man . . . and if you 
 fought it out you came through better than you 
 started. And if you mistook this sudden upleaping 
 of Spring in you for something worth smashing the 
 whole fabric of your life and other lives for all your 
 decencies, your faith, your habitudes and plans and 
 beliefs you were taking a doubtful cross-road instead 
 of going straight on to the goal. You were lying down 
 on your job. . . . Sydney Sydney! . . . 
 
 He went through hours of agony, there in the green 
 place where he and Sydney had loved each other so. 
 But in the end, when he lifted his face at a light touch 
 on his shoulder, he was at peace. 
 
 "I came to find you, son. Some of your mail got 
 mixed with mine " 
 
 He looked up into the kind, absent old face. 
 
 "You were right," he said. "It was the moment of 
 revolt. I almost know it now; or if I don't, I shall 
 soon. . . . Uncle Andrew, ought I to tell Marjorie?" 
 
 Uncle Andrew put a thin old arm around him. It 
 was not a strong arm, but it felt somehow as his 
 father's had once long ago when he was a frightened 
 little boy. 
 
 "I wouldn't, son," said Uncle Andrew. "It isn't as 
 if you and she were of this new generation, who can 
 
THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 
 
 fling those things at each other without being scarrecE 
 for life. You mustn't hurt her. . . . And beside,, 
 you'd have to confess two people's sins beside your 
 own. Be merciful to the old man. I hadn't any busi- 
 ness to lure you up here, so you'd get the thing out of 
 your system under my own interfering old paw. But 
 I'd seen as fine lads as you go on the rocks because 
 nobody interfered. . . . Don't tell your wife on me." 
 
 There was a half -humorous, half apologetic smile 
 on his kind old face. But deeper than that was a 
 light of fatherhood and loving yearning so real, so- 
 selfless, that Malcolm found he could not answer be- 
 cause of a tightening in his throat. He only dropped 
 his head for an instant against the shabby old cape- 
 overcoat, as if he had been in reality the little fright- 
 ened, naughty lad of long ago, found and brought 
 home. . . . 
 
 The two canoes parted. Malcolm turned his head 
 to watch the other out of sight, in the sunset light that 
 glinted on Uncle Andrew's spectacles and Sydney's 
 warm dark hair. They were going to her brother's 
 camp, where her lover was. He could not be sorry 
 that he had come this close to wonderful, vivid Sydney.. 
 And yet her ruthlessness, her attitude of understand- 
 ing and forgiving because she had herself gone through 
 what her lover had, her little charming arrogances and 
 scornfulnesses would they, after all, have been an 
 air he could live in? He recalled, with a sense of re- 
 membered warmth and comfort, the little affectionate, 
 conscientiously detailed letter Uncle Andrew had 
 
134 THE MOMENT OF REVOLT 
 
 brought him. It was like Marjorie. Just the funny 
 little phrases she always used. And a snapshot of 
 herself and the children, on the lawn, she absurdly 
 young and dainty to be the mother of three of them. 
 . . . Babs was getting to look like her well, she 
 couldn't do better . . . Lord, it was going to be good 
 to get back to it all again! . . . And it came to him 
 all in a great warm wave how well things were with 
 him. These men and girls still struggling with Ro- 
 mance they were still righting through their stormy 
 seas toward the hope of what he had. He was out 
 beyond the breakers. 
 
 He turned his head once more. Only the flash of 
 water on a paddle, and a flutter of the old cape-coat 
 could be seen, so far apart they had gone. 
 
 "Going home," said Malcolm Shore to himself con- 
 tentedly under his breath. 
 
"NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 
 
 DANE LEE TOLLIVER met the two Polokoffs nearly at 
 the same time. Of course, a part of the shock of the 
 whole thing was because he did not know they were 
 brother and sister. It was just one of those queer 
 little twists which make so much difference. 
 
 When nice, romantic, public-spirited Aunt Emily 
 told him enthusiastic tales of the wonderful little Pole 
 who supported herself and her mother, wrote articles 
 for social service magazines and practically controlled 
 the immigrant population which, now there was a 
 factory, flooded the lower end of the pleasant old 
 town where his aunt lived, Dane was not thrilled. He 
 rather visualized the sort of bobbed hair which goes 
 with bone glasses, and a tense personality which 
 would hurl tracts on economics on all who passed. 
 But Aunt Emily, wily as well as public-spirited, was 
 determined that no visitor should escape being shown 
 her pet, and when she drew Dane apologetically into 
 a harmless looking lace-shop it was Elsa Polokoffs 
 lace shop. 
 
 He did not realize in the least, then, that this Elsa 
 was that Elsa. She was more Scotch than foreign- 
 looking; a clear-cut little freckled face with big vel- 
 vety brown eyes and a childlike intentness of expres- 
 sion. Only her full red lips, and a touch of accent 
 
 i3S 
 
i 3 6 "NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 
 
 which added to her swift winningness, betrayed that 
 she was an outlander, not Scotch after all. Her per- 
 sonality was vivid and appealing at once, from her 
 curly brown hair to the small brown hand that showed 
 the laces, and when she laughed you could not realize 
 that she had ever written an article in her life. Dane, 
 who had let himself be dragged in Aunt Emily's train 
 on many an earnest-minded errand, found himself sud- 
 denly excited about life, and very glad he was in the 
 same room with Elsa. He had the American business 
 man's infinite affectionate tolerance for his women- 
 folk; he was the more indulgent to Aunt Emily's ways 
 because she and his sister were all there was left of 
 that branch of the family. It had been an exceedingly 
 good family, too; singers, statesmen, and even philan- 
 thropists to burn. And the terrific noblesse oblige of a 
 certain type of old American ran resistlessly in their 
 veins, one and all, though Aunt Emily had perhaps 
 more than her share. As Verena, the irreverent flap- 
 per sister, put it, Aunt Emily simply ate up the down- 
 trodden. 
 
 Elsa did not seem to come under that listing. In- 
 deed, she was so warmly feminine that you thought of 
 that, it seemed, to the exclusion of everything else. 
 Aunt Emily and she, it appeared were doing something 
 connected with gymnasiums, in the foreign end of 
 town. . . . Why, she ought to have been motoring 
 and dancing, instead of making earnest plans like that, 
 and selling lace to take care of herself and the bundle- 
 
"NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 137 
 
 wrapped old mother of whom he caught a glimpse as 
 they passed out. She was so gay and so young-seem- 
 ing; though she was twenty-seven, Aunt Emily said. 
 
 It seemed to him after they had gone that they had 
 talked together for a long time, though all he could 
 remember was one swift sentence, passionate earnest 
 in between her flashing gaiety, about starving people 
 in Poland. She seemed with him, after they had gone, 
 as vividly as she had been in the flesh. 
 
 "Miss Polokoff stays with one, somehow, doesn't 
 she?" said Aunt Emily as they got home, echoing his 
 thoughts so exactly that it didn't seem like Aunt Emily, 
 who usually moved in a cloud of her own. "She is 
 wonderful, really . . . these new Americans have so 
 much to give us. . . ." 
 
 He hadn't the heart to pin her down to any analysis 
 of the hackneyed phrase, because she was staying with 
 him too, Elsa. He let Aunt Emily dilate on her and 
 her clan, which it appeared was filling up the old 
 American suburb, and overflowing thickly as he 
 knew, indeed, into Dorrance. And he stayed home 
 when Elsa was due to come see Aunt Emily a night or 
 so later. It was late, for she kept her shop open all 
 hours, and seemed to do other things besides, having 
 an apparent overcapacity for work. He watched her 
 as she talked. Very different from either the conven- 
 tionally gay women he knew near his own age, or the 
 almost as conventionally audacious flappers his sister 
 brought about the house in the holidays; very ardent, 
 
138 "NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 
 
 very controlled, frank about things he would never 
 think of speaking of, as silent about things he did; 
 intensely different and with a personality like a flame. 
 He had arranged with her, almost before he knew it, 
 to come down to her place a couple of nights a week 
 and show her about book-keeping. 
 
 When she had gone she would not let him bring 
 her home and the spell of her lifted, he was a little 
 surprised at what he had arranged so swiftly, but not 
 sorry. He wanted to see more of her. She seemed, 
 indeed, as if she had "so much to give," not only to 
 her new country, but to every one. Even the shuffling 
 old mother, wrapped in her inevitable shawl, bright- 
 ened a little as she patted her daughter's trim shoul- 
 der with one grimy old hand. Dane looked at her 
 with what he had hoped was concealed repulsion, as 
 he sat by Elsa at the table behind the little shop. 
 
 "You do not like her?" said Elsa swiftly, but with- 
 out anger. "Tell me. I want to have her better; I 
 want to have myself better." She evidently spoke sin- 
 cerely, so Dane, who was a fairly blunt person, an- 
 swered her frankly. 
 
 "It's hard for them to change when they're as old 
 as that. But I think you should get her to wash her 
 hands more. Of course, the dust " 
 
 "It's not dust," said Elsa, and laughed. 
 
 "Well, I suppose the American idea of the daily 
 bath would seem a good deal," said Dane, beginning 
 to feel like a tactful Americanizer. 
 
 "The daily bath," said Elsa, looking thoughtful. 
 
"NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 139 
 
 Then she laughed again. "I don't know. I think I 
 can do something." 
 
 Her own little brown hands were beautifully mani- 
 cured. How on earth had she managed to do so much 
 for herself? . . . They went on with the books, and 
 Dane's smooth fair head and Elsa's little brown one 
 bent close together, and they were all the better friends 
 for the sudden excursion into improvements for Mrs. 
 Polokoff. 
 
 It was not till the day before he went back if 
 you could call a drive of ten miles going back that 
 he realized how closely he had been drawn to Elsa. 
 Nothing keeps a man from a woman so much as the 
 sense of her efficiency which is an inference that she 
 can do without him and Elsa was patently efficient. 
 But when he came down to give her her final lesson, 
 earlier than usual, because he wanted more time with 
 her, quite frankly, he did not find her waiting for 
 him at the door of her shop; and when he made ad- 
 venturous way into the little neat inner room, she was 
 in a dark corner, crying. 
 
 "So tired so tired," she said, like a desolate child, 
 her little accent stronger than usual, in her relaxation 
 to grief. Dane was not of the men who are dis- 
 mayed and annoyed by tears. He was rather a poised 
 and thoughtful man, who took things at their evident 
 value; and Elsa was not of the weeping kind. As she 
 sat curled helplessly in her chair, all her capacities 
 had slipped off like a cloak, and she was just a little 
 tired helpless thing, who had carried too much of a 
 
140 "NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 
 
 burden too bravely; all his protectiveness went out to 
 her. Just a child, after all, to his thirty-four years, 
 in spite of her courage. . . . 
 
 He soothed her, and she pulled herself together 
 bravely, but they were closer after that, because when 
 you've quieted a little sobbing thing, and made her 
 feel that after all life isn't so hard, and she has clung 
 to your hand and you to hers, somehow something 
 has happened. When he went, her brown eyes clung 
 to his blue ones, and their hands held fast again. The 
 wistfulness and straightness and bravery of her went 
 with him all down the street. 
 
 If he married Elsa for the thought went with him 
 too there would be no opposition from his family, 
 such as there was of it. As has been said, they had 
 always been knights-errant, male and female. They 
 would love her all the more for her past sorrows, and 
 her brave fight upward, and the little adorable accent. 
 As for his friends, they too would accept it as a natural 
 doing of the Lee Tollivers. Their errantry was char- 
 tered, so to speak, like that of the libertines one has 
 always heard about. They had of tradition a sort of 
 license to rescue. When his great grandfather had lib- 
 erated his slaves in 1850, it had only been considered 
 a Lee Tolliver sort of thing; when his grand-uncle had 
 endowed Dor ranee University with a half -million and 
 only left his family the other half, the family had 
 accepted the Lee-Tolliverness of it calmly, along with a 
 perpetual seat on the Board of Governors, and so, 
 minus the seat, had the surrounding countryside. . . . 
 
"NOBLESSE OBLIGE' 1 141 
 
 He was coming back to see her soon, he had told 
 Elsa. He drove back to Aunt Emily's for his final 
 night with her, a little warm feeling of fitting into the 
 world in general and of perfect adjustment to Elsa 
 in particular, thrilling him all over. 
 
 Naturally, when he was back in Dorrance he found 
 that things had piled up in his absence. A hard day 
 with his stenographer cleared off his arrears of letters; 
 two more pulled things back into pre-absence shape; 
 but he was rather tired at the end of the third day. 
 The next time Aunt Emily decided that she could 
 live without him no longer, he decided, he would make 
 her come over and stay with him and Verena awhile. 
 Her affairs were as disentangleable as his, though she 
 did not think so. He looked forward a little lazily to his 
 evening at home. Old Dr. Blanton, whimsical, kindly, 
 with his pleasant aura of the impossible and leisured 
 Past, was coming in to dinner, to see Verena, who was 
 one of his particular pets, and had returned from her 
 boarding-school the day after he had returned from 
 Aunt Emily's. Probably, for the Tollivers kept an in- 
 formal welcomeness, some youth might drift in to adore 
 young Verena, or she might have telephoned for one of 
 her girl friends to run in. Amiable old Mrs. Golds- 
 borough the housekeeper was well broken in to ad- 
 justable meals. There would be a pitcher of some cool 
 drink waiting on the verandah, for it was a hot 
 day. . . . Poor little Elsa would have to be in that 
 store all day long. ... He might drive over and take 
 her out to-night. 
 
142 "NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 
 
 But when he came up on the porch the placid scene 
 he had been cooling his mind with was not there. In- 
 stead, at the door stood his sister Verena, half-crying 
 with helplessness, and apparently trying to send away 
 a dogged-looking, untidy youth who was talking her 
 down. As he jumped out of his car he converged 
 with Dr. Blanton, making his way more hastily than 
 his wont in the direction of Verena. 
 
 "Here, what's this?" the two men demanded, Dr. 
 Blanton adding a "sir." The boy turned his batteries 
 on them. 
 
 "I tell the young lady, I say, for the love of heaven 
 and your own mother, lady, I say, grant me just one 
 chance to get my college education! I say " 
 
 Dr. Blanton laughed, which did not stop either the 
 boy's vehement gestures with a pencil and pad or his 
 air of determined grovelling. 
 
 "Let us talk to him, Verena, my dear. If you have, 
 as this young man seems to feel, a college education 
 in your pocket, you should not be cruel. . . . She 
 hasn't, my son. Now, tell us about it." 
 
 The old man's coolness quieted the ridiculous little 
 scene curiously; the boy and girl both stopped their 
 excitement. He turned to Dr. Blanton, who sat him- 
 self leisurely down on a rocker, adjusting his glasses 
 with deliberation, and began all over again, rather 
 more slowly. 
 
 "I keeping telling the young lady, it for my college 
 education! Only three little dollars in taking a new,, 
 
"NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 143- 
 
 a quite new magazine, and I am helped to win most 
 votes; I get a college education!" 
 
 His attitude was one of frank wonder that the magic 
 word "college" had not made Verena immediately 
 present him with the three dollars. 
 
 "But it isn't a new magazine it's one Lucy Lati- 
 mer's father writes for," said Verena impatiently. 
 "And he simply shouted me down, and then groveled. 
 And his" 
 
 "It is new magazine! Fine magazine just come out, 
 I tell you. Would you keep a poor boy from a col- 
 lege education, in free country?" He gestured vio- 
 lently. "What a girl know about which magazine it 
 is?" He came closer to Dr. Blanton, who seemed to 
 have charge of things, vehement and unwashed, and 
 insistent on his ideas. 
 
 Before he was finally sent away he had told two 
 or three outright lies and denied them again; he had 
 groveled with waving hands and discoursed on their 
 mothers; he had mentioned in an emotional manner 
 the persecution of denying him privileges as worthy 
 as this in a land of freedom; and finally gone away, 
 apparently not a whit the worse or the better for his 
 argument. 
 
 Verena drew a long breath. 
 
 "Whew I'm dead! Let's go get our dinner. 
 Uncle Andrew, how on earth could he pass an exami- 
 nation, even if the magazine did pay his tuition?" 
 
 "My dear Verena, brains and ethics or even brains 
 
144 "NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 
 
 and judgment or brains and bathing do not neces- 
 sarily go together. See de Gourmont on the associa- 
 tion of ideas," replied Uncle Andrew, stepping aside 
 to let her go in the door. "You will find him extremely 
 helpful in clarifying your thought, though I don't know 
 that you would either. Our young friend just gone 
 has doubtless read more philosophy than you'd think. 
 But he hasn't assimilated it. The young don't 
 though I feel a temerity in blaming even such a speci- 
 men of the young as has just departed, in the present 
 age!" 
 
 "Oh, I know the demon Younger Generation!" 
 said Verena with a jerk of her slim shoulders, and 
 an affectionate squeeze of Dr. Blanton's meagre arm 
 to mitigate it. "But he wasn't Younger Generation, ex- 
 cept incidentally; he was horridly Bolshevik. . . . Oh, 
 it's nice to get back to your mines of information, 
 and good old Dane's earnest helpfulness in the world. 
 How's Aunt Emily, Dane as many little tame Causes 
 as ever?" 
 
 "Rather more, I think," said Dane, smiling, and a 
 little uneasily conscious that Elsa his wonderful 
 Elsa! might rank as a tame cause in Verena's mock- 
 ing young mind. But Verena was, being of her day, 
 very solemn about herself. Presently she was relating 
 with vivid eyes her wonderful plans for a Poetry So- 
 ciety, to be constructed by herself during the 
 summer vacation. That it might rank as a Cause was 
 a suggestion her brother, conscious of the family bias, 
 
"NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 145 
 
 did not hint. And presently she stopped full in the 
 middle of her talk to say doubtfully: 
 
 "Perhaps we should have given him his three dollars 
 after all. . . . If only he hadn't been so horrid. . . . 
 But perhaps college would teach him to tell the truth 
 and not cringe and talk about persecution what do 
 you think, Uncle Andrew? And not try to cheat," 
 she added thoughtfully, for their visitor had certainly 
 made several efforts at misrepresentation. 
 
 "I think it might have been better if he had learned 
 all that some time ago/ 7 said Uncle Andrew with placid 
 ambiguity. 
 
 "He's not college-timber," said Dane, and then, 
 with a sudden memory of Elsa, "but we certainly owe 
 them equal opportunities." 
 
 "If they are equally worthy," said Uncle Andrew 
 dreamily. "We mustn't discriminate against ourselves, 
 you know, Dane, because we had the misfortune of 
 being born decent. It isn't really wrong of us." 
 
 They laughed, and the talk slid back to Dorrance 
 University. Dr. Blanton was on the Board of Gov- 
 ernors, as well as Dane. 
 
 "The application list is promising to be overcrowded 
 this year," said Uncle Andrew. "If our young friend 
 with the rug-seller manners is as brilliant as I some- 
 how judge him to be, he will probably crowd out some 
 friend of yours, Renie. Young Walter Dabney, for 
 choice." 
 
 Verena looked horror-struck, but only for a moment. 
 
146 "NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 
 
 "Oh, but that couldn't possibly happen/' she said, 
 cheering up. "The magazine boy couldn't even use 
 good English." 
 
 Dr. Blanton, except when he forgot and sat up read- 
 ing, went to bed early, and Verena was called up and 
 immediately afterwards descended on by a squadron 
 of friends, male and female. Mrs. Goldsborough 
 could be trusted to hover .about sufficiently, so when 
 Dane had taken Dr. Blanton home there was still time 
 for him to drive back the short ten miles that lay be- 
 tween him and Elsa. She was rarely through, these 
 summer evenings, till nine or so, and he could drive 
 her in the cooling air till half past eleven, he counted, 
 and get back home by twelve. 
 
 The little shop was closed, except for one glimmer- 
 ing light, and he rang, and then passed in, in the way 
 he was accustomed to doing. She should have been 
 sitting, with her little intent manner like a busy child, 
 at the table with her books. But she was not. She 
 was standing in the little room, whose table was still 
 spread. Her mother, talking swiftly in her own lan- 
 guage, and another vehement, gesturing figure, seemed 
 between them to fill the room. 
 
 Dane seemed to grasp, almost as if it had been one 
 of those things one has always known, that Elsa and 
 the boy were brother and sister. His identity with 
 the magazine-seller of the earlier evening came a sec- 
 ond later, with a shock that he could not help, though 
 he reproved himself for its snobbery. 
 
 Elsa turned when he came in, with a little quick 
 
"NOBLESSE OBLIGE'' 147 
 
 cry of gladness, and then seemed to pull herself toward 
 a little less cordiality and a little more dignity, as she 
 introduced her brother. His name was Michael, or 
 what sounded like it. 
 
 The moment might have been a little awkward for 
 Dane, but it was not in the least so for Michael. He 
 rushed forward with beaming amiability. 
 
 "I have known this gentleman before. How fine 
 that he is your friend, Elsa! I am sure he is a good 
 friend to all he knows. I was talking to him and his 
 sister this afternoon about taking magazines from me 
 to get a college education." (The old mother, getting 
 a word or two of this, beamed with frank pride in 
 the background a pride which she had never shown 
 in Elsa.) " Perhaps he will take one or even two years 
 from me now, if he is your friend. Elsa will tell you 
 that it is true I can have the college education by sell- 
 ing the magazines, will you not, Elsa?" 
 
 He made a dart toward the pad over which he had 
 tried to browbeat little Verena, and approached Dane 
 with what Verena would have described as a "heavy 
 fawn." It would have been funny if it had not been 
 horrible. The horribleness, of course, Dane realized, 
 with another twitch of conscience and of noblesse 
 oblige, lay in this bowing, eager creature's relationship 
 to Elsa. Dane could not help glancing at her. But she 
 stood very still, her little eager face held into an un- 
 usual immobility. 
 
 "All right. Here, I'll take what is it? Here's five 
 dollars," said Dane to end the scene, and partly be- 
 
148 "NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 
 
 cause he felt he should, after all. "I came to see if 
 you could go for a little drive with me, just an hour 
 or so, Miss Elsa. We could take Aunt Emily if you 
 liked." 
 
 The boy took the money with more bowings and 
 beamings and thanks. Elsa did not seem to want 
 to go, very much. Neither did Dane, to be frank. 
 The whole affair had spoilt his boyish anticipation 
 of the hours with Elsa. It was made sullied, some- 
 how; the more that the brother, with still-waving 
 hands, and still more groveling exuberance, if the two 
 things can be combined, insisted her into it. 
 
 But once out of the hot little overfilled room, with 
 its loud voices and odors of food, the old magic fell 
 on them. The car sprang forward through the vel- 
 vety, cool night-wind, and he felt the strong vibration 
 of Elsa's presence at his side, and blamed himself for 
 over-sensitiveness. He was not a very imaginative 
 person, Dane Tolliver; a gentleman of the old school, 
 perhaps; apt to be sensitively strict with himself, and 
 to judge that other people must be high-minded be- 
 cause he was. An incongruous severity after a cer- 
 tain point a far one was reached, was perhaps the 
 outcome of this judgment. But he did not often ar- 
 rive at it. 
 
 "My brother is very, very clever," said Elsa with 
 a note of pride in her voice. "I only went through 
 grammar-school; I had to work then, so I couldn't 
 go any more, except at nights to the Settlement in 
 New York. Michael went through high-school." 
 
"NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 149 
 
 "Then how is it you speak so much better English?" 
 demanded Dane, holding back the rest of the questions 
 on the point of their difference, out of sheer decency. 
 
 Her great dark eyes lighted eagerly, as she turned 
 her little vivid face to his in the half-darkness. 
 
 "Because Michael was so set on getting studies. 
 You have to watch oh, so hard to speak good Eng- 
 lish. He says a degree will get him much farther 
 ahead than anything else. He says he can pick up 
 other things afterwards, or even if he doesn't, when 
 he has made money" 
 
 "But you know that isn't true, Elsa. Self-respect 
 is worth a great deal; more than anything else, we 
 think." 
 
 She looked a little downcast in the darkness. Then 
 she spoke defiantly. 
 
 "Self-respect is a very expensive luxury for the 
 poor." 
 
 Dane was first rebuffed by what she had said in 
 her clan-feeling, then began to think of it. ... Yes. 
 . . . perhaps over there it had been different, a place 
 where self-respect was hard. ... He was in love with 
 Elsa, that was the long and the short of it. And in his 
 love and in his desire to be fair to these people who had 
 had so much less chance than he Aunt Emily's 
 phrases trooped into his mind and stayed there he 
 built excuses in his mind for the alternate fawning 
 and snarling of Elsa's brother. He was a prospective 
 citizen, who had come eagerly to America with high 
 expectations of the golden gifts she had for him; 
 
150 "NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 
 
 he should not be crushed by disappointments. The 
 opportunity denied him over there should be given 
 him full measure here. The 
 
 ... But nevertheless it was a comfort to find that 
 he and Elsa were only half-brother and sister! 
 
 "He is working so hard to get the highest number 
 of subscriptions," Elsa had said, with that little note 
 of warmth in her voice that a woman only has for 
 her child, or, sometimes, the younger brother or sister 
 whom she has mothered. . . . Perhaps . . . after 
 all ... He turned to Elsa at his side, and began to 
 question her about herself. It was a story of bravery, 
 of hard work, of supporting at first the younger half- 
 brother, and finally the old mother; and, on the whole, 
 he could not help seeing, of wonderful help given her 
 from first to last. Settlements, people at lectures, 
 people where she worked, after the first six months 
 of her childhood in a sweat-shop everywhere the 
 whole machinery of helpfulness had helped Elsa move 
 forward, from the time when she came over as a 
 small child. An uncle had helped to support her till 
 she had finished grammar-school. After that every 
 one in the family had focused on Michael, who, ap- 
 parently, had focused quite as wholeheartedly on him- 
 self. The old mother, the uncle, even a cousin in 
 Poland, had helped Michael ahead, at all possible 
 costs. The lower West side school he had gone 
 through with flying colors, as far as book-learning 
 was concerned, had lifted him to the point where he 
 was perfectly capable of passing his entrance exami- 
 
"NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 151 
 
 nations for college. Once he had won this competi- 
 tion which the Woman's Outlook had instituted, and 
 his sister seemed both passionately anxious and ex- 
 ceedingly sure he would, he would go through Dor- 
 ranee University, and then become a doctor or a 
 lawyer. He had chosen Dorrance because of its su- 
 perior prestige, Elsa said frankly. And he had 
 planned having his mother and sister's business near 
 enough so he could live with them, which would be 
 cheaper. 
 
 All Elsa's devotion and passion were concentrated, 
 Dane could see plainly, on the brother and his career. 
 It had never occurred to her to question why he 
 should be pushed ahead at her expense; she was willing 
 and glad that it should be so. But presently, as the 
 car drove slowly now through the cooling evening, 
 Dane forgot about the brother. Elsa herself, with her 
 charm and her ardent feelings and her quick articulate- 
 ness; yes, and her eyes and her little deft hands and 
 her voice with its sweetness and quaint precision, were 
 all that the world contained. Himself a man of no 
 great articulateness, to whom things were the harder 
 to express the more deeply he felt about them, Elsa's 
 swift flexibility of mind and capacity for self-expres- 
 sion had an especial charm. Men of his type are 
 drawn either by what is most like them or what is 
 most different; and Dane was drawn to Elsa by their 
 differences. 
 
 Elsa herself had forgotten about the business of 
 life; nearly about the brother, it seemed, by the time 
 
152 "NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 
 
 they had come back to her house. There was still a 
 little light. He drove away, building all sorts of 
 dreams. It is probable that Elsa, going sedately to 
 bed in her little hot room where, now, the old mother 
 slept also, had her dreams as well. 
 
 Dane went on with the routine business of his 
 work and play. Most men can do this, even when 
 they are walking on air, and carrying on a courtship 
 with the one girl in all the world. But the routine, at 
 this time, makes very little impression on them. Aunt 
 Emily, deep in her welfare work for her village, no- 
 ticed, and beamed romantically but in silence. She 
 was a well-bred aunt who kept her mouth shut. 
 Verena, in the full tide of life at its most excellent 
 as the life of sixteen is said to be nowadays noticed 
 nothing much, not even when Dane drove her over 
 to see Elsa and took the girls out together. She was 
 fascinated by Elsa, as most people susceptible to charm 
 were, and forgot about her next day. As for Dr. 
 Blanton, the little family's closest intimate, he was 
 accounted too much a dreamer to worry about affairs 
 not his own. If Dane had been negotiating for some- 
 thing in the way of incunabula, now, it would have 
 been different, doubtless. 
 
 And so it was rather a thunderbolt when Dane, 
 one evening when he had not, for decency's sake, gone 
 again to see Elsa he had seen her three times that 
 week found a flushed and passionate Elsa on his 
 own porch, at five o'clock. For Elsa to leave her 
 
"NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 153 
 
 cherished business at quarter past four, as she must 
 have done to take the trolley over to Dorrance, meant 
 that something rather wild must have occurred. 
 
 She had been holding him off definitely keeping 
 him from what they both knew was the formality 
 only of actual speaking of their marriage; but as he 
 came up the steps she caught his hands with a cry 
 that swept away the last fragile straw barrier be- 
 tween them, and landed her in his arms. 
 
 "Elsa Elsa darling, what is it?" he said anxiously, 
 drawing her into the house. 
 
 She lay still in his hold for a moment, as if pro- 
 tection and love were very good. Then she drew 
 away and began to talk vehemently. 
 
 "It is Michael. You can help us you must help 
 us. You love me; I know you do. And I love you. 
 He has got the award of the magazine. He can pay 
 his tuition in the college. And they are persecuting 
 him. Because he is foreign, they will not let him in. 
 He has passed examinations, good examinations, and 
 because they wrote and asked his school principal if 
 he was oh, I do not know what if he made friends, 
 and if he had public spirit as if a boy his age could 
 have public spirit! . . ." 
 
 Till now the delight of her in his arms, and the 
 frankness of her facing their love for he had been 
 afraid for some little time now, so steadfastly had 
 she held away from him, that she did not care for 
 him, that he had not paid much attention to what 
 
154 "NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 
 
 she was saying. He had always rather shut Michael's 
 relationship to her out of his mind, anyway, as one 
 does half -admittedly disagreeable things. But now, 
 though still holding her, and in a tension of happiness 
 because of it, he spoke, as he could not help speak- 
 ing; as any one of the Lee Tollivers would have 
 spoken since the first one came away from a very 
 comfortable estate in England for conscience' sake. 
 
 "Any boy of any age should have public spirit. 
 You know that if you stop to think, Elsa." 
 
 "I don't know what it is," she said angrily. 
 
 "It is what you have yourself, when you work 
 with Aunt Emily on your village improvement plans," 
 he told her gently. "And you're talking a little wildly, 
 dear, when you talk of persecution. Haven't you 
 always been helped, yourself? People are just as 
 ready to help your brother." 
 
 "If you think that is so, then help him," said Elsa 
 tensely. "He will be your brother too, if you marry 
 me unless you do not want to marry a poor girl, a 
 peasant, from a strange country without money 
 without friends without any of the grand things 
 you have!" 
 
 He looked at her strangely. 
 
 "Elsa, is that what you think of me?" 
 
 She burst into tears. 
 
 "Oh, forgive me! I am nearly wild with it all. 
 Michael walks up and down the house and talks of 
 it all day long. He says they persecute him and 
 
"NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 155 
 
 indeed, isn't it persecution to keep a boy from col- 
 lege, who can pay, and who has passed the examina- 
 tion?" 
 
 Elsa was very warm and vibrant in his arms. He 
 loved her very dearly. 
 
 "It doesn't seem fair," he said. 
 
 "Then you'll make all the others stop it? You are 
 on the Board of Governors. I know. Michael found 
 out. It is the old clergyman, the one Michael saw 
 the first day, when he tried to sell your sister the 
 magazine, who is his head persecutor, Michael says." 
 
 Dane laughed aloud in the revulsion of his feelings. 
 Old Uncle Andrew, kindest and saintliest of men, 
 most ineffectual and dreamy soul on earth? He was 
 on the faculty, holding a chair of some dreamy lan- 
 guage which not one student in twenty ever elected, 
 Dane remembered now. But as a trampler of 
 Michael ! 
 
 "Uncle Andrew as a persecutor is simply plain 
 funny, Elsa," he said, when she looked at him indig- 
 nantly. "He couldn't persecute a mosquito. His very 
 housekeeper rides over him rough-shod. Your 
 brother's excited. I seem to remember that he excited 
 easily," he couldn't help adding. The whole thing 
 was too funny, with Uncle Andrew in it! 
 
 But it was not funny to Elsa, he was to find. Elsa, 
 too easily in earnest, too easily tragic under her little 
 quick bright ways, was tragic now. 
 
 "You don't love me," she said, as other women 
 
156 "NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 
 
 have said before her. "And even if you do, it will 
 do you no good. ... I will never see you again, if 
 you do not make them let Michael into college. " 
 
 "Single-handed?" Dane tried to be light about it. 
 "My child, I might stand out forever, and if the rest 
 of the board were against me it wouldn't do any good. 
 This is still more or less of a democracy." 
 
 She considered, this awhile, her finger on her lip. 
 Her eyes, still wet, looked up at his piteously; she 
 was like an animal fighting for its young. 
 
 "But you'll do everything you can to make them 
 have Michael?" she begged. 
 
 "Everything," said Dane, for the old Lee Tollivers 
 had their hands on his shoulder, "in fairness." 
 
 "Everything!" said Elsa passionately, "or I will 
 never see you as long as I live." 
 
 It might have been just a girl's threat; but he 
 knew already his Elsa's immovability when such things 
 as these were in question; and the strength of pur- 
 pose which had carried her where she was to-day 
 could be trusted to hold her to what she was saying 
 now, even though she looked at him with love as she 
 said it. 
 
 The struggle went on until he took her home. As 
 he left her at the door he caught a glimpse of Michael, 
 rushing across the floor to find out what success she 
 had had. Somehow the sight jarred on him. 
 
 He did not realize that there was so much serious- 
 ness in the matter until he attended the meeting of 
 the Board of Governors. 
 
"NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 157 
 
 He dropped into a seat by Dr. Blanton. 
 
 "I hear you've become a Head Persecutor, Uncle 
 Andrew," he said, lightly, and yet with a certain 
 anxiousness. 
 
 But the old man did not smile; he looked troubled. 
 "I hope not I hope not," he said. 
 
 "Just how do things stand?" he asked. 
 
 "The lists are overcrowded," said another member 
 of the board, from Dr. Blanton's other side. "We 
 have to weed pretty sharply. A college only holds 
 so many. Desire for learning is admirable, I sup- 
 pose," he added, with a half -laugh. 
 
 Dane looked around the little room at the governors, 
 alumni all, good men and true; some better and 
 some worse than others, of course, but all honest, 
 according to their better or worse lights; all public- 
 spirited, so far as he knew, and loving their college 
 as one loves the things one has not only known in boy- 
 hood, but worked for and given to. He tried to re- 
 member that he was bound to be prejudiced in favor 
 of men who were his old friends; to think that they 
 were bound to be right. But even with all the pres- 
 sure he brought on his own sensitive conscience, he 
 could not feel that they would be unfair. Narrow, per- 
 haps. ... He must remember that. He must throw 
 all his influence against narrowness, class prejudice, 
 overvaluation of standards because they were one's 
 own. . . . Nevertheless the memory of shrieking, un- 
 self -respecting young Michael, speaking to Verena as 
 she had never been spoken to in her life for the sake 
 
158 "NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 
 
 of forcing her to buy something she did not need or 
 want, intensified itself before his mind. 
 
 While he had been thinking, sunk in himself, a dozen 
 candidates had been reviewed rapidly. The Board of 
 Governors was sitting only on the doubtful cases; 
 naturally there were a proportion of boys who had 
 been passed unquestionably. There were six or seven 
 more on the list than could be crowded in by any 
 possible effort, after what seemed almost a too severe 
 heightening of the scholarship requirements. 
 
 He helped the men discuss pro and con a score of 
 cases before they reached Michael. He was braced 
 for what defense he could give, but curiously enough 
 found it was not necessary. With the mention of 
 Michael Polokoff s name the vice-head of the local 
 settlement house, one of the two women on the board, 
 sprang to arms for him. 
 
 "He has passed a wonderful entrance examination," 
 she said. "That's admitted. And he has worked as 
 no native American could work, to earn the prize of 
 tuition that a magazine offered. I have talked to 
 him myself. He has the most wonderful ideals. . . 
 We do not realize how much our new element . . ." 
 
 "Has to give us," Dane finished the cliche in his 
 mind, and then heard Uncle Andrew say in a sharply 
 cut voice very unlike his ordinary one, "What?" 
 
 Miss Dabney was a little posed. She stammered. 
 
 "Why why new enthusiasm 1 Love of beauty > 
 wonderful clan feeling. . . ." 
 
"NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 159 
 
 "Ethics?" 
 
 "Wonderful ethics! I tell you, that boy, when I 
 talked to him, expressed a feeling of brotherhood, of 
 passion for the downtrodden, of selflessness. . . ." 
 
 Dane, recollecting the cool way Michael had ac- 
 cepted the sacrifice of his mother and sister, and the 
 frank desire he had shown to trade on Dane's friend- 
 ship for Elsa, remembered also that Miss Dabney was 
 a little given to accepting the expression of a feeling 
 as the actual possession of it. And he realized also, 
 with dismay, that every word she said was being dis- 
 counted by the business brain he possessed, and the 
 unconscious estimate he had made of Michael from the 
 beginning an estimate, nevertheless, more generous 
 than he would have made of a boy of his own clan; 
 and Elsa was waiting for the one gift he had ever 
 been able to make her. And yet if college would 
 make Michael more the man he should be. ... 
 
 Uncle Andrew was speaking again, one tremulous 
 old hand pulling at his little pointed gray beard. 
 
 "A desire for a college education is laudable. But 
 our national passion for education blinds our romantic 
 eyes to the fact that all kinds of education are not 
 suited to all kinds of people. My personal knowledge 
 of this boy does not lead me to think that he is a suit- 
 able subject for matriculation at Dorrance." 
 
 There was an outcry. Dane found that he had un- 
 derestimated the chivalry of the board toward Michael 
 and his kind. Miss Dabney's shrill voice pierced 
 through the confusion 
 
160 "NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 
 
 "Wonderful scholarship . . . wonderful feeling for 
 
 
 * 
 
 Then the voice of the President of the board, un- 
 moved, weighty: 
 
 "You would not make such a drastic statement 
 as that without reasons, I know, Dr. Blanton. Won't 
 you give them to the Board?" 
 
 "They will sound, perhaps, a little odd, perhaps," 
 said Uncle Andrew half -apologetically. "Frank judg- 
 ments on the sins of one's fellows do somehow, now- 
 adays. But it is possible to be intemperately toler- 
 ant; and very hurtful. The boy in question, to my 
 knowledge, is capable of lying, bullying, financial de- 
 ception in a small way, he possesses neither honesty, 
 self-respect, self-control nor courtesy. I do not think 
 we should let the fact that he is of the immigrant class, 
 through a fear of being unfair to him, make us unfair 
 to ourselves and our country." 
 
 Miss Dabney frankly considered Dr. Blanton out- 
 of-date, and the fact of his negligibility was peeping 
 out of her manner as she answered. 
 
 "We've only your word for it, Dr. Blanton; and 
 things are looked at differently nowadays. I don't 
 think anybody else here knows of any of these these 
 cruel charges to make against a friendless immigrant 
 boy." 
 
 ("The female of the species," said Grannis, the 
 member next Dane, in a low voice. "That's what 
 comes of women on boards always going off their 
 heads on personalities.") 
 
"NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 161 
 
 "I think," Dr. Blanton answered her quietly, "that 
 others here may have." 
 
 . . . Elsa. If he was honest, if he backed up Uncle 
 Andrew and spoke against the admission of this boy 
 and after all, what difference did the admission or 
 barring out of one boy make? he would have to tell 
 Elsa. And Elsa was more to him than anything on 
 heaven or earth. . . . Elsa, who he knew her had 
 meant what she said about giving him up forever. 
 
 More than anything but the hands of the men 
 and women of his race behind him were on his shoul- 
 der again. Not more than his conscience . . . not 
 more than his country, to whom a man like this, with 
 the weapon of Dorrance's stamp and of being a col- 
 lege graduate, would be an enemy. With all the im- 
 portance he knew himself to have on the Board, all 
 the influence he knew he had because of what he was 
 and what he stood for, he spoke as decisively as Dr. 
 Blanton had. 
 
 "Yes, Miss Dabney, I have. I have seen and known 
 enough of him to feel as Dr. Blanton feels, that in 
 spite of his brilliant scholarship Michael Polokoff is 
 absolutely undesirable, and for the reasons he gives." 
 
 "Would you say the same if he were a Lee Tolliver?" 
 demanded Miss Dabney fiercely. 
 
 "I would say the same," said Dane steadily, "if he 
 were my own brother." 
 
 The next thing that happened at that meeting had, 
 perhaps, never happened at a meeting of the staid 
 and honorable Board of Governors of Dorrance Uni- 
 
162 "NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 
 
 versity before. The door of the little study next the 
 room where the meeting was going on was dashed 
 open, and Michael strode melodramatically into the 
 room. He was livid and panting with the swift, wild 
 anger of uncontrolled peoples. By Miss Dabney's 
 stricken face Dane knew electrically that she had been 
 persuaded to bring him or let him come in some way, 
 but had not realized that he would listen or enter. 
 His thick, wet-looking black hair was tossed about 
 his furious face, and he was nearly hysterical. He 
 must have heard the whole thing. Indeed, he stated 
 as much. 
 
 "I have heard you all!" he shouted to the group 
 of silent men. "I have heard you listen to these two 
 aristocrats, these men who hate and despise and perse- 
 cute me because I have not had their opportunity; 
 who would keep opportunity that I have toiled for 
 from me. . . ." 
 
 Well, it was soapbox oratory, from one standpoint. 
 From another it was very moving. He demanded fair 
 play, he spoke of the spirit of noblesse oblige being 
 lacking, he demanded public spirit and the gift of 
 equality from them. He told in detail intimate inci- 
 dents of his own life and his family's, showing how 
 poor they were and had been, and how hard they 
 worked. He spared the Board not one private horror 
 or personal emotion. Miss Dabney sat with a moved 
 face. Mr. Grannis, whose house the Board Meeting 
 was held in, still looked as annoyed as any man would 
 be likely to under the circumstances. The rest of the 
 
"NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 163 
 
 Board listened quietly more quietly than Michael 
 had expected, for finally he ran down, finishing rather 
 lamely, and dropping into his note of what Uncle 
 Andrew had called "rug-selling" again. That is, he 
 whined. 
 
 There was silence when he had finished at last. He 
 cast one glance at himself in the Grannis' long old- 
 fashioned pier-glass, a wild and, from a distance, pic- 
 turesque young figure gesturing in the midst of the 
 silent Americans. Then he folded his arms and leaned 
 against the door, shivering a little with fatigue. 
 
 Then the President of the Board it was Mr. Gran- 
 nis spoke. 
 
 "Dr. Blanton, I wonder if you would mind making 
 things clear to this young man from your viewpoint." 
 
 Uncle Andrew rose stiffly, and bowed punctiliously 
 to him. "With pleasure, sir; though I fear I cannot 
 make anything clear. Truth is in the ear of the be- 
 holder. But I will explain my viewpoint to him." 
 He turned abruptly more abruptly than such an old 
 man could have turned, you would have thought, and 
 addressed the boy, leaning sulkily against the door 
 with folded arms. 
 
 "I am going," said he, "to speak to you just as 
 rudely as you have spoken to us. ... You demand 
 fair play, noblesse oblige, public spirit, of us, Michael. 
 You don't have any idea that you should give it back. 
 Your idea of fair play is, apparently, getting all you 
 can for yourself, and at best a close corporation of 
 your relatives, and taking advantage of our American 
 
1 64 "NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 
 
 sensitiveness and feelings that we owe you everything 
 because we are better off than you, to force us to the 
 wall. You say we owe you an education if you can 
 pay for it we have a right to ask you what you are 
 going to do with it. If you whined and lied your way 
 into this scholarship you are going to go on whining 
 and lying your way through the world, with the help 
 of our good name. We have the right to demand of 
 you a decent outlook on the world, and decent treat- 
 ment of the world. You have proved to the satisfac- 
 tion, I should think, of every one present, that you 
 will never get it. If you would listen at a door to- 
 night, you would do as tricky a thing six years from 
 now, when you're a professional man, by grace of 
 Dorrance. You have brains, but you have no genuine 
 ideals, and I should not say that you had very many 
 principles. This country needs men in power who 
 are right-minded; with your brains and persistence 
 you will go far. I think you will go in the wrong 
 direction; and so far as I can help it you shall not 
 go, backed by Dorrance." 
 
 Michael had with difficulty kept still during all this. 
 He flung out his arms now with what promised to be 
 another wild appeal; but Mr. Grannis spoke. 
 
 "So far as I am concerned the fact that you eaves- 
 dropped settles your eligibility with me, if you had 
 passed with the highest marks the university ever 
 gave. Of course, I cannot say how the rest of these 
 gentlemen will vote. I must ask you to withdraw, now, 
 
"NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 165 
 
 Mr. Polokoff. We have been guilty of an irregularity 
 in letting you be present so long, as it is." 
 
 The boy went out, curiously enough, at the tone of 
 command, as a small child would have done. 
 
 "I am going to tell Elsa!" was his last word to 
 Dane. The words were childish, but tone and ex- 
 pression were not. 
 
 The chairman spoke. 
 
 "What is your pleasure on the admission of Michael 
 Polokoff, gentlemen?" 
 
 "It may stir up trouble with the foreign element," 
 said one of the members who was a politician, an- 
 xiously. But nobody paid attention to him. Except 
 for Miss Dabney, the vote against Michael was unani- 
 mous. 
 
 Dane made his way straight to Elsa that night. It 
 was not his way to avoid issues. He had gone with 
 his conscience; he had spoken against Michael; he 
 had lost Elsa, who was more to him than anything 
 on earth. But there was a fighting chance of Elsa 
 still, and he was going to take it. 
 
 He had half feared that the door would be locked 
 against him, but Elsa rose to greet him from the little 
 inner room. She was very white. 
 
 He could not make out her mood. . . . Her little 
 loving face that was so dear to him was like a mask. 
 She was firm in some resolve; he could not tell what. 
 
 "Michael has told me," she said first. "The old 
 clergyman brought him home. He was so angry he 
 
166 "NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 
 
 was sick." Dane braced himself for the inevitable 
 rest. But instead, all at once she flung her arms on 
 the red-covered table, dropped her brown head on 
 them and began to cry, softly and heartbrokenly. "I 
 am so ashamed! I am so ashamed!" were the incred- 
 ible words she said. 
 
 "Of what, darling?" he said, putting his arm around 
 her shaking shoulders. 
 
 She did not push him away, which gave him heart. 
 
 "Of Michael; and of me, for never showing him 
 how to be a good citizen. I was older, I should. He 
 told me ... all the things he did, and the things 
 they said. And the old clergyman ... he explained 
 to me. He was . . . like you. . . . Dane, oh, Dane, 
 I can't marry you. Not because you didn't make them 
 take Michael; but because I couldn't see why they 
 shouldn't why he wasn't all right and you could. 
 . . . We'd never fit ... we'd never be happy. . . . 
 Michael." Womanlike she began to defend the 
 brother she had been condemning, classing herself with 
 him in her fury of pity. "When did it ever pay us 
 to be good, to practise noblesse oblige to be fairer 
 than the other person over there? We've never had 
 a chance at honor! It it takes strong people to be 
 honorable when the odds are against them, and noble- 
 ness means losing your only little, least chance to sur- 
 vive and breathe! Michael's people never had a 
 chance at honor. . . . Mine my father was differ- 
 ent not crushed down so. You you can't under- 
 stand. We haven't courage yet to do anything but 
 
"NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 167 
 
 snatch at all the advantages, fair or unfair. We're 
 afraid to yield a foot of advantage afraid to have 
 self-respect. Over there if we did we went down." 
 
 "My beloved," Dane spoke huskily, "don't you see 
 how wonderful you are, to be able to say all this " 
 
 "I am not wonderful. I am a woman who has 
 fought for years, and fought under a wrong banner. 
 And I should not know it or see it now if I did not 
 love you so much more than anything on earth that 
 I am swept toward seeing things your way. How do 
 I even know I am right now? . . . But I do know 
 I can not marry you, with a brother you would 
 always despise, and I oh, my heart I must be 
 ashamed of him too." 
 
 "But darling, we can help him we can teach him, 
 maybe " 
 
 "I can, perhaps: not if I marry you. . . . Michael 
 wanted me to use my influence with the people here, 
 to make dreadful trouble because of him, because 
 they love me and are proud of me. And I will tell 
 you the truth for a little I was angry and wanted to. 
 And then what the old man said, and you, came back 
 over me like a flood, and I could not. . . . Oh, what 
 are right and wrong for a woman? Just loving one 
 man or another man? ... I am not sure of myself 
 yet. . . . Oh, Dane, I love you so I would die for 
 you. . . ." 
 
 He had her tight in his arms now, kissing the little 
 wet face passionately. "You aren't to die for me 
 you're to marry me, now, this week, my own Elsa." 
 
168 "NOBLESSE OBLIGE" 
 
 She lay in his arms for a moment, clinging 
 close. . . . "It would be good to be with you so 
 good! ... I did not know I could love anything as 
 I love you " 
 
 "Then marry me now. There's nothing else on 
 earth matters " 
 
 She drew herself from him resolutely. 
 
 "No. Perhaps some time if I can show Michael 
 the things that count, if I can help my people. Have 
 patience, my dearest one. ... I can teach them what 
 loving you has taught me, maybe ... oh, I am strong 
 now, loving you 
 
THAT OTHER EILEEN 
 
 THE two men stood outside a bedroom door, one with 
 his hand on the other's arm, in an unconsciously sharp 
 clutch of anxiety. 
 
 "It's bad, Dr. Blanton, or Jessie wouldn't have sent 
 for you to tell me," he said. "Won't she live?" 
 
 The old clergyman smiled. 
 
 "She is not in any danger. You, as a doctor, should 
 know what the other doctors have told us Eileen was 
 out of danger weeks ago." 
 
 "I was afraid a sudden relapse " said the other, 
 with a look of haggard terror. It was his wife, whom 
 he loved more than anything else in the world. Then 
 his face lighted. "If she's better I can go in." 
 
 Dr. Blanton held him back. 
 
 "They think not. I know you should not till I've 
 told you." 
 
 "For heaven's sake tell me, then!" 
 
 "She's not delirious any longer. She will be able 
 to be up, as well as ever, in a few days. That's the 
 good news. . . ." 
 
 "But the bad? For heaven's sake, Uncle Andrew " 
 
 "She doesn't remember. She's gone back. . . ." 
 
 "All the more reason," said her husband resolutely, 
 "that I should go in and see her." 
 
 "I wouldn't" 
 
 169 
 
170 THAT OTHER EILEEN 
 
 He opened the bedroom door. . . . 
 
 Eileen had been lying in bed when she came to her 
 senses. It was late afternoon, and the sun fell in a 
 long bar across her bed and tinged one of the two 
 thick plaits of red-brown hair that lay on the coverlet. 
 She thought lazily that the plaits looked much longer 
 lying there than when she had braided them the night 
 before. Then she thought in the same dreamy fashion 
 fnat the room was unfamiliar. But her eyes were 
 tired, and often a room looks strange when you're not 
 fully awake. She gazed about her it was a strange 
 room, for this was a double bed in which she now lay 
 in solitary state, and her own was so small. An un- 
 expected figure caught her eye. 
 
 "Jessie must have been worried about me!" she 
 thought, for a professional nurse sat near-by. Eileen 
 saw that the nurse was looking at her. 
 
 "I'm all right now, I think," she said pleasantly. 
 "Is it is it too late for me to get up and be married?" 
 Her face flushed as she spoke, and she laughed shyly. 
 She felt quite well, though tired as she was, she dreaded 
 a little the ordeal of the marriage ceremony. And 
 last night seemed so dim and far away. Perhaps her 
 sleep had been troubled with dreams, for even the 
 plans for the wedding were hard to remember. 
 
 "It's all right," answered the nurse hastily; "you 
 don't need to get up you you have plenty of time. 
 You had better go to sleep again." 
 
THAT OTHER EILEEN 171 
 
 Eileen laughed and sat up against the pillows, rub- 
 bing her eyes with a child-like gesture. 
 
 "But, my dear nurse, I'm not sleepy," she expostu- 
 lated, "and I want to know about a lot of things. 
 To begin with, why did my sister have me sent here? 
 Please tell me where am I, and how long have I 
 been unconscious, and" Eileen hesitated "what 
 about Mr. Hardy? My sister told you, didn't she? 
 We were to be married to-day," for the first time 
 her face showed alarm "is it still to-day?" 
 
 The nurse answered hurriedly, with a little catch 
 in her voice, "Yes," and mumbling an excuse left the 
 room. Eileen's troubled eyes wandered to the soft, 
 close-drawn curtains and the big mirrors. But she felt 
 too weak and tired to care much about anything. Even 
 Victor seemed a dim and distant figure. Victor he 
 had such quick, emphatic gestures hadn't he? and 
 brown eyes, and after all a comforting calm when you 
 least expected it. Yes; that was Victor. 
 
 Presently as she brushed back the tendrils of hair 
 which had fallen over her forehead, she saw something 
 on her left hand that made her gasp in astonishment. 
 On her third finger shone a wedding-ring. Evidently 
 she had been unconscious longer than she thought. 
 And Victor had actually done that which one some- 
 times reads of in papers married her while in a des- 
 perate illness so that if she died she would at least 
 be his in death. 
 
 So that was off her mind! And with a contented 
 smile she sank again into the pillows. 
 
172 THAT OTHER EILEEN 
 
 Her sister Jessie was at the bedside when Eileen 
 awoke. Jessie's round face was the only familiar thing 
 in all this strangeness. 
 
 "Tell me the whole thing, Jess," she demanded. "I 
 must have lost several weeks since 'last night'." 
 
 "Eileen " stammered Jessie, and Eileen, her little 
 hand seeking that of her sister, laughed. 
 
 "If you're responsible for my being married to 
 Victor while I couldn't object, I forgive you." 
 
 "I suppose I'm the one to tell you," Jessie said, in 
 a choked voice, "but I don't know where to begin." 
 
 "At the beginning, naturally," Eileen answered with 
 a little laugh. "How long have I been ill?" 
 
 "Five weeks this time. Oh, Eileen, don't laugh!" 
 Jessie whispered as if some one were dead. 
 
 Eileen felt a cold shiver of fear creeping over her. 
 
 "This time?" she repeated. 
 
 Jessie began to cry softly, and did not answer until 
 Eileen repeated the question. 
 
 "It's eight years ! " said Jessie, between sobs. "Eight 
 years! You you're twenty-six, Eileen." 
 
 Eileen sat up and clutched the ribbons at her throat. 
 
 "Eight years!" she repeated incredulously. "It 
 isn't true it isn't! Give me a hand-glass." 
 
 Eileen snatched the mirror from Jessie's hand and 
 stared at herself. What she saw was nearer the girl 
 of eighteen than she had dared to hope. Thinner, per- 
 haps, and the plaits longer, but still the same rich red- 
 brown. Except for a ghastly pallor she could detect 
 
THAT OTHER EILEEN 173 
 
 no difference in feature or coloring. The only change 
 she could define was in the expression. This face 
 looked as if it knew. In so far as she could see, she 
 was just the Eileen Arden who had danced and 
 laughed and wondered the night before her wedding. 
 
 Eileen laid down the glass with a shudder. 
 
 "I have heard that such things happened," she could 
 hear herself saying with singular composure, "but I 
 didn't think they happened to people one knows, let 
 alone yourself. Jessie, where's Victor? Tell him 
 I'm not angry; he was afraid I would be, wasn't he?" 
 
 She stopped short, for poor trembling Jessie had 
 dropped to her knees beside the bed. Eileen noticed 
 there were gray threads in her sister's pretty dark 
 hair. Of course, eight years 
 
 "How shall I tell you?" Jessie managed to utter 
 brokenly. 
 
 "Is he dead?" Eileen demanded hoarsely. "Oh, 
 Jess, tell me, tell me everything! I'll go mad if you 
 don't." 
 
 Jessie tried to compose herself. She had been 
 mother as well as sister to Eileen for many years, 
 and what was asked of her she endeavored to do, if 
 it were humanly possible. 
 
 "Eileen, dear, you remember dancing with Victor 
 the night before you were to have married him and 
 suddenly losing your balance? You remember strik- 
 ing your head against the sharp corner of the musi- 
 cians' platform?" 
 
174 THAT OTHER EILEEN 
 
 "Yes, yes!" cried Eileen impatiently, "but that's all 
 I do remember, and it's vague and misty. Have I 
 been asleep eight years? That couldn't happen!" 
 
 "No," faltered Jessie, "that didn't happen. But 
 when you regained consciousness, dear, you you 
 went back." 
 
 "What do you mean?" Eileen questioned impati- 
 ently. Was she the victim of some dreadful brain 
 disease, she wondered. Oh, if Jessie would only tell 
 her all that had taken place during those blank years! 
 
 Jessie looked at her sister with pitying eyes. 
 
 "You went back" she repeated. "You thought you 
 were a little girl again. Everything that had occurred 
 in the interval between twelve and eighteen was oblit- 
 erated." 
 
 It sounded to Eileen like sheer delirium, and she 
 stared at her sister blankly. 
 
 "You've heard of such things, haven't you?" Jessie 
 asked. "Oh, it was terrible! Yours was a famous 
 case; and doctors came from all over the world to see 
 you. Though I hated them for watching you and 
 publishing their theories, I didn't dare to send any 
 of them away, for fear that he might be the very 
 one to cure you. Oh, Eileen, can't you remember one 
 single thing? not even dear old Dr. Blanton, the 
 clergyman you liked so much, or Alistair Gray?" 
 
 "No !" said Eileen despairingly. "No, no, no! You 
 must tell me, Jessie. Don't you see that you must? 
 everything!" 
 
 "I am trying," said Jessie gently, "but I can't do it 
 
THAT OTHER EILEEN 175 
 
 all at once. When you first recovered from the acci- 
 3ent we thought you were pretending to forget, but 
 you were so upset and suffered so much when we 
 doubted you that we soon knew you were not. Oh, 
 dear, it was heart-breaking! You asked for mother." 
 
 The mother who had died when Eileen was fifteen! 
 
 "And I went through all that sorrow again?" Eileen 
 cried, "Oh, poor little girl! Jessie, how could God " 
 
 "I don't know," said Jessie dully. "I don't know. 
 But, dear, can't you guess what else was blotted out 
 from your mind? You had only known Victor a 
 year " 
 
 Eileen sprang up again, her little figure shaking. 
 
 "I forget Victor?" she cried passionately. "Jessie, 
 I couldn't/ couldn't!" 
 
 "Yes, you forgot Victor," said her sister, in a shak- 
 ing voice. 
 
 But there was the ring on her hand, and Eileen con- 
 soled herself. Even if she had lost eight years of 
 her life, all the rest were intact; and after all twenty- 
 six years wasn't so old for a married woman. Sup- 
 pose she had forgotten him, and he had had to win 
 Eis suit all over again why, Jessie needn't look so 
 tragic about it! 
 
 "You forgot him," Jessie repeated. "You didn't 
 even like him. And you wanted your dolls and a skip- 
 ping rope, and thought you were in school again. You 
 were happy, except when the doctors worried you 
 that was my only comfort." 
 
 "Well," said Eileen, "go on." 
 
176 THAT OTHER EILEEN 
 
 "I gave in to you finally," Jessie continued, "and 
 moved away from the place where we lived. I dressed 
 you like a child, and let you grow up again. It was 
 a blessing you were so little and childish-looking. 
 People never suspected that you were not a girl of 
 twelve nobody, that is, but Dr. Blanton and Alistair. 
 They said that you would go on developing and grow 
 up all over again, and so it proved. Some day, they 
 believed, your mind would catch up with itself, and 
 you would remember everything. But to come back this 
 way with everything for the last eight years forgot- 
 ten oh, I wish you remembered! Try, dear, they 
 said that you would." 
 
 "I can't now," said Eileen, "but I may if you tell 
 me more. Can't I see Victor?" 
 
 "You hated Victor," Jessie went on. "They thought 
 it was because you subconsciously disliked him for 
 having been the cause of your fall." 
 
 Poor Victor! She could remember her lover's eyes. 
 Poor Victor! but how ridiculous, when he had been 
 her husband all this time! 
 
 "So finally he gave you up." 
 
 Eileen for a second felt her senses slipping. 
 
 "Am I not married to Victor?" she demanded. 
 
 "No," said Jessie, covering her face with her hands. 
 
 "Thenthenwho?" 
 
 "Alistair Gray." 
 
 Eileen did not faint or cry out. Her brain held 
 steady, and she wondered vaguely that it should the 
 brain that had betrayed her. She looked at Jessie, 
 
THAT OTHER EILEEN 177 
 
 i 
 now thoroughly frightened poor, loving Jessie who 
 
 had done her best. 
 
 "I've broken it to you all wrong!" she cried pite- 
 ously. "Oh, Eileen, speak; say something!" 
 
 "You've broken everything," said Eileen slowly. 
 Then the power of thought came back and she began 
 to talk breathlessly. "Oh, Victor, Victor! I love 
 him and I'll never love any one else! And you let 
 me be tied to this other man. I can't even remember 
 him! And he's had me all these years when I wasn't 
 myself. Perhaps he's thought Jessie, has he thought 
 " she hesitated, then finished weakly, "that I liked 
 him?" 
 
 "You love Alistair very much," said Jessie steadily. 
 "It's only that you don't remember. You see, dear, 
 you have awakened before you were eighteen again." 
 
 What did Eileen care for problems in arrested 
 mental development! She went straight to the thing 
 that concerned her most. 
 
 "Love Alistair! Love a man who would marry 
 another man's sweetheart when she was insane? You 
 are absurd. Did you say he was a doctor? He 
 couldn't have been a very good one." 
 
 "A famous one," asserted Jessie. "Eileen, you 
 surely recollect. Don't you remember how he loved 
 you, and how you feared that you'd recall having cared 
 for another man? You said that to me several times 
 before well, not five weeks ago." 
 
 Eileen shook her head. 
 
 "Oh, it's hideous!" she gasped. "I I wish I could 
 
iy8 THAT OTHER EILEEN 
 
 kill myself! Perhaps, after all, that is the best way 
 out. Oh, my poor Victor!" 
 
 A man's face floated before her eyes as she spoke, 
 familiar and loving; she could hear him saying: "My 
 own dear little wife ! " 
 
 Her sister's voice, protesting, aroused her. "I'll 
 tell you something else," she was saying. "Victor 
 doesn't need your pity. He married two years before 
 you did, and his wife's only been dead a year." 
 
 "When did I marry?" Eileen asked finally, "or 
 rather, when did you let that poor, insane child marry 
 this creature, Alistair Gray?" 
 
 "When you thought you were sixteen," Jessie 
 answered, "though you were really twenty-two." 
 
 Eight years how awful! and that waltz of last 
 night still throbbing in her brain! She could hear the 
 violins: 
 
 "Your dream-love, 
 Wait for her; 
 She'll be true " 
 
 And Victor, Victor! whose warm hands and vivid 
 eyes were as real as if he were actually by her side. 
 Victor had not waited! And now, by a turn of the 
 wheel, Victor was free again, and she It was 
 detestable, but one thing stood out as the essence of 
 dreadfulness her marriage to the unknown Alistair 
 Gray. She could not hate Victor or Jessie, because 
 she loved them; she could only feel cruelly hurt. 
 But Alistair Gray she hated. 
 
THAT OTHER EILEEN 179 
 
 "Alistair " Jessie began again timidly. 
 
 "I won't see him," Eileen cried out wildly. "I will 
 drown myself! I will not " 
 
 "Dr. Gray wants to know if Mrs. Gray can see him. 
 Dr. Blanton is here, too, Miss Arden," said a maid's 
 voice in a whisper at the door of the chamber. But 
 Eileen's sharpened senses could have heard the words 
 miles away. 
 
 "No, no, no!" she screamed, losing the last remnant 
 of her self-control. But it was too late. 
 
 The door opened, and there stood a man on the 
 threshold. His face was dimly familiar, yet no feeling 
 of affection stirred in her heart, only a vague friendli- 
 ness at most; then even that was swamped by the 
 surge of hate she felt for Alistair Gray. She only 
 caught a sight of the figure, then hid her eyes in her 
 hands. The outline of another man's figure might 
 have been seen in the hall the other doctor, doubtless, 
 but Eileen was so obsessed by the horror of meeting 
 her unknown husband that she did not notice. The 
 scream that rose to her lips was never uttered, for 
 everything went black again and she fainted. 
 
 When she came to herself Jessie was by her side, 
 but the others had gone. Eileen did not speak at 
 once; there seemed to be such a lot of thinking to be 
 done that she lay perfectly still. Her mind was quite 
 clear now. She had been brought up to consider duty 
 paramount and she was married to Alistair Grayl 
 Ought she could she 
 
 When she spoke to Jessie, it was in a firm, cold voice. 
 
i8o THAT OTHER EILEEN 
 
 "I'm well enough to dress," she said, "please help 
 me. You needn't tell me about any of the things that 
 you were planning to do, for it will do no good. If I'm 
 given time, I may forgive the man; but I won't stay in 
 the same house with him. You allowed me to get into 
 this horrible situation; now you must help me out. 
 Tell that Alistair Gray you tied me to that I absolutely 
 refuse to see him or stay here. Tell him to send me 
 away where I can be alone. Tell him that if I stay 
 away long enough I may go mad again and remember 
 him. That should have the proper effect! " 
 
 "You were never mad," Jessie began helplessly; "it 
 was only " 
 
 "Whatever it was," Eileen cut her short fiercely, 
 "help me to get away from this house." 
 
 She sprang from the bed and stood holding a chair, a 
 pitiful childish figure with her long plaits and staring 
 eyes. 
 
 "Oh, yes, yes, Eileen; I'll do everything you wish!" 
 cried Jessie, putting her arms around the "little sister" 
 who was still to be protected and humored and petted. 
 "Only get back into bed. I'll go and arrange things 
 the best I can with Alistair." 
 
 Eileen, not unwillingly, did as she was bidden, for 
 her first wave of anger, spent, physical weakness 
 threatened to overcome her. After what seemed years 
 of waiting, Jessie returned. 
 
 "Alistair is willing you should go," she said. Some- 
 how Eileen hated him the more for it. "He gave me a 
 message for you," Jessie went on quickly. "He said: 
 
THAT OTHER EILEEN 181 
 
 'Tell her I'll wait for her as long as she likes forever 
 I am the one jor whom she cares, although she may not 
 remember me now. I'll wait for her and in the end 
 she'll want me again." 
 
 Eileen let Jessie help her on with clothes she had 
 never before seen, of a fashion she did not know, but 
 finer and more beautiful than any she remembered. 
 They were clothes that belonged to the other Eileen 
 Eileen Gray, Alistair Gray's wife and she hated the 
 touch of them. 
 
 Every detail of the journey had been carefully 
 arranged. Automobile, train, carriage and by night- 
 fall she was lying on a couch in a fine old house in the 
 country, served perfectly, and surrounded by luxuries 
 for which she had often wished in the old days, but 
 never expected to enjoy. Eileen was too tired to think, 
 and took deliberate pleasure in the strange loveliness 
 and comfort of her surroundings. 
 
 But next morning, the tangled strands of her life lay 
 before her. Not the least of her trials was the sense of 
 unreality which pervaded everything. Surely she 
 would go to sleep some night and wake up to find that 
 she had dreamed the whole wretched story. She could 
 hear herself telling Victor: "And I dreamed my hair 
 was that much longer, dear, away down to my knees 1 " 
 The lengthening of her hair and a flitting expression of 
 sweet wisdom that she occasionally surprised in her 
 glass were the only tangible tokens she had of the lost 
 years. One other thing troubled her. She slept 
 dreamlessly, in so far as she knew, but twice she awoke 
 
i8z THAT OTHER EILEEN 
 
 to find herself smiling and on the point of saying: 
 "Good-morning, dearest " 
 
 It was some little time before she realized that it was 
 the other Eileen, that poor miserable little thing they 
 had married to Alistair Gray, who was about to offer 
 the greeting. She remembered him in sleep and 
 loved him! Eileen felt her cheeks burn, it was 
 ghastly! 
 
 She wanted to be faithful to her husband, but how 
 could she when she hated him, and loved and remem- 
 bered only Victor? 
 
 "Your dream-love, 
 Wait for her; 
 She'll be true 
 
 The mocking music always came with the thought 
 of Victor's vivid brown face. She could not remember 
 much that they had said or done in those days, eight 
 years ago. There was only the memory of the face, 
 and the overwhelming love that came with it. 
 
 She took to walking a great deal in the garden, and 
 tried to think and, above all, to remember. Queer 
 half -thoughts, half -pictures rose in her mind like 
 phantoms; a brisk ride in the autumn wind; a leaf that 
 caught in her hair; a room all browns and golds alight 
 with the glow of a crackling fire, and a girl in blue 
 playing on the piano; a man's voice could that voice 
 belong to the tall figure, the gray eyes and hair she had 
 seen in the doorway? And through all the pictures 
 
THAT OTHER EILEEN 183 
 
 was the agonizing memory of Victor and their love. 
 The thought of him dominated her mind Victor's 
 dark eyes, his slight boyish figure, his steadfastness 
 and protecting care. It was as if no moment of those 
 lost years had been without him. And all the while 
 she was married to Alistair Gray ! 
 
 It was while she was in this mood, one night, that 
 Eileen was summoned to the telephone. A man's 
 voice answered. 
 
 "This is Alistair, Eileen." 
 
 Eileen struggled a moment for words. 
 
 "Good evening, Doctor Gray," she said inadequately 
 at last. 
 
 "ffle**/" 
 
 Eileen strove to compose herself, then answered: "If 
 you please, I would rather not speak to you." Then 
 losing her self-control, "Promise you won't come to 
 me promise you'll leave me alone till I say. Oh, I 
 don't want to hate you, but I do, I do" 
 
 "That's enough, Eileen," said the quiet voice. "Try 
 to forgive me if you can and remember, I promise. 
 But I called you up because there is a letter for you 
 here. Victor Hardy, the man you were to marry, has 
 written you ... I am forwarding the letter. But in 
 justice to me, please do not receive him until I have 
 seen you. I have a most important reason for asking 
 this not a selfish one. There are some things which 
 you must know." 
 
 "A letter from Victor?" was Eileen's only answer. 
 In spite of herself her voice vibrated with joy. 
 
184 THAT OTHER EILEEN 
 
 "Yes," said Dr. Gray, "you will do what I ask?" 
 
 Assenting reluctantly, mainly because she could not 
 escape feeling that her husband had the moral right 
 to make this stipulation, hate him as she might, she 
 said good-by. 
 
 Victor wrote what was frankly a love-letter. Eileen 
 poor Eileen! read it over and over. He asked 
 forgiveness, as Alistair had. Men seemed always 
 wanting forgiveness, thought Eileen. What was there 
 to forgive? 
 
 Alistair had guessed correctly. Victor begged to 
 come to see Eileen once more she was his she had 
 always belonged to him! 
 
 Eileen threw down the letter. The vision of Victor 
 had never been more vividly present. It was as if she 
 had never parted from him. Every impulse was a wild 
 desire to go to him to go straight to her lover ! After 
 all, why should she keep vows that the other Eileen 
 had made to Alistair Gray? But she had prom- 
 ised! The little figure paced up and down the long 
 room, thinking, thinking. The soft, satin skirts that 
 clung around her, the very pins in her red-brown hair, 
 belonged to that other Eileen. 
 
 She delayed answering Victor's letter, and tried by 
 every device to divert her thoughts, which were 
 becoming unbearable. But the books she started to 
 read were all half -remembered, and she could hear 
 Victor's voice in every sentence. His presence echoed 
 through her music. And once she came across the old 
 waltz: 
 
THAT OTHER EILEEN 185 
 
 "Your dream-love, 
 Wait for her; 
 She'll be true " 
 
 It was a fresh copy that other Eileen must have 
 known the song. It seemed so; yet no hateful memory 
 of the gray eyes and gray hair of the half-seen man 
 arose now when she played it. It reminded Eileen 
 only of Victor. 
 
 In the morning when honor seems more real and 
 love less seductive she wrote to Victor. She held 
 herself in check, saying nothing of her love; she told 
 him simply he must not come to see her. She must 
 have time to think and decide. But she forgave him 
 if there was anything to forgive. Eileen took the 
 letter to the mail-box at the gate. It was not until 
 she touched the lace at her breast and found it wet that 
 she realized she had been crying. 
 
 Victor answered immediately. He would not come 
 till Eileen said that he might and he loved her. That 
 was nearly all. He did not write, somehow, quite the 
 way she expected. The phrases and his use of words 
 Jarred upon her acute sense of fitness. But that is a 
 common enough thing. He loved her! That atoned 
 for all. 
 
 So Eileen waited and thought and agonized. For a 
 fortnight she alternated between a wild desire to see 
 Victor, and a chill feeling that nothing mattered much 
 after all; that dull half-living was the best that could 
 happen to her. At least both men had given her the 
 
1 86 THAT OTHER EILEEN 
 
 same promise. She need not expect either one until 
 she summoned him. Then a tumult of emotion over- 
 whelmed her and with a sob she made a prayer: "Oh 
 God, let him come only just once more! I will be so 
 good I will be so fair I won't let him kiss me I 
 won't even let him touch me. I'll be very cold, very 
 careful, only send him, dear God; please send him!" 
 
 It was not, however, either of her lovers that God 
 or any one sent. Only an old man whom she remem- 
 bered dimly, a spare old gentleman in a quaint caped 
 coat, who tied a buggy outside surely no one used 
 buggies any more, even in this strange part of the 
 country! and asked, seeing her wandering aimlessly 
 in the garden, if he might come in. 
 
 "I think I know you," she said, feeling as if she 
 might trust him, though she could not remember who 
 he was. 
 
 "I think you do," he said, smiling, and entering. 
 "I am your clergyman, Dr. Blanton, and very truly at 
 your service, my dear." 
 
 "Jessie said " she began, and then stopped. She 
 did not want to commit herself, if this nice old gentle- 
 man did not know of her lapse of memory. 
 
 "Jessie said I knew about everything? She was 
 quite right," said he calmly, cutting the knot of her 
 difficulties. "And I know that things will straighten 
 themselves out, if you only give them time." 
 
 The feeling of knowing him was so strong that she 
 spoke eagerly, intimately. After all, she must know 
 him, behind that puzzling veil which had dropped over 
 
THAT OTHER EILEEN 187 
 
 the last eight years. The feeling of trust and friend- 
 ship was surely a good enough guide to go by. And 
 she was so in need of help! 
 
 "Oh, what shall I do?" she said impulsively. 
 
 "Just what you're doing," he said gently. "Wait." 
 
 "But if you know" 
 
 "It's hard. But somehow, I don't believe it's as 
 hard as it seems." 
 
 "Not now," she said. "They have both promised to 
 stay away till till I can think, and remember or 
 even decide." 
 
 "Don't try too hard to come to a decision," said the 
 strange old man who after all seemed so little strange. 
 "Let the decision come to you. I am nearly sure that 
 it will, and I have seen a great many things happen." 
 
 She wondered if he knew how she longed for Victor, 
 how Victor's face came before her all the time, and his 
 love seemed to be the one thing in the world she must 
 have. . . . No. Old people couldn't know those 
 things. But he was kind, and having him there felt 
 like help, some way. They talked a little longer 
 before he drove away. 
 
 He turned at the gate. 
 
 "I'm going to do what some people may think is a 
 very wrong thing, Eileen," he said. "I am going to 
 advise a man against his conscience. . . ." 
 
 She wondered what he meant, until the next day. 
 Then she knew. 
 
 She was pacing up and down the garden, the next 
 night, and she saw a man standing by the gate again. 
 
i88 THAT OTHER EILEEN 
 
 Not Dr. Blanton, this time. The vivid face, the quick- 
 moving figure that had haunted her ever since her 
 awakening. 
 
 "Victor!" said her heart; her lips were struck dumb. 
 
 "I will not come in unless you say I may," he said in 
 the swift, pleading voice she remembered so well. 
 He leaned across the gate, his brilliant dark eyes 
 searching hers. "It's so long, Eileen! I have broken 
 my promise, to come. . . . Won't you give me back 
 the rest of it and let me in?" 
 
 What was it she had promised to be very calm, 
 very cold, very careful? For she was neither. She 
 had his hands in hers before she knew it. 
 
 "Oh, I have wanted you so!" she said. 
 
 "Then you do forgive me? You do love me yet? 
 You do remember me?" 
 
 The words hurried on in the old swift way so well 
 remembered. He drew her close to him. It seemed 
 so right and so natural! And yet through all some- 
 thing far back in Eileen's brain urged to be heard. 
 She must go back to Alistair there was some good 
 reason she should remember. But it was all so dim and 
 confused this man with his arms around her was the 
 only real thing in the world. 
 
 "I don't think I ever really forgot you," she 
 whispered. "Everything I have touched or done, 
 even in this house, had had you written all over it. It 
 was just as if you had been with me always always! 
 and you know oh, no matter what I seemed to do I 
 know I always loved just you." 
 
THAT OTHER EILEEN 189 
 
 Walking towards a little bench, they sat down 
 together. Eileen felt steadier now and drew away a 
 little. 
 
 "But I have a right to what they have left me of my 
 youth!" she told herself fiercely. "Nobody can blame 
 me for that other Eileen's doings." 
 
 Her lover laid his hand on hers. How well she 
 remembered the warm protectiveness of that handl 
 
 "Your dream-love, 
 Wait for her; 
 She'll be true " 
 
 "Do you ever think of that thing you used to sing 
 for me? You were my dream-love always." 
 
 "But if that is true," the angry thought came, even 
 with his arm about her, "if that is true, why did he 
 marry that other woman?" A host of questions rose 
 to her mind. He had married first. But it would 
 spoil the hour for her to question now. There was 
 plenty of time. 
 
 The wonderful night was full of gentle murmurs 
 and the perfume of flowers, and Eileen was happy for 
 the first time since she had found herself. After all, 
 who is to blame for anything? Perhaps even Alistair 
 might have a just excuse. She shivered. She did not 
 want to think of that other Eileen's husband, whose 
 ring was on her finger. She took away her hand. 
 
 "It- isn't right," she said. "I shouldn't be here with 
 you." 
 
190 THAT OTHER EILEEN 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 "Oh, my dear, my dear, what could be more right?" 
 
 "It isn't right," again she protested helplessly like a 
 child. Her eyes filled with tears. "Please go," she 
 said, "I was wrong to let you come." 
 
 "Why wrong?" he asked. "You are going to belong 
 to me again, surely, Eileen?" 
 
 She leaned wearily against him. 
 
 "I am so tired, and it is so hard to do right! Please 
 go now dearest!" 
 
 "But I may come again, and you will have decided?" 
 he said, his hands closing upon hers, and his bright 
 dark eyes looking down into hers swimming with tears. 
 "To-morrow night, Eileen. You can decide by to-mor- 
 row night, easily." He rose and went toward the gate. 
 "I know now that you will make the right decision," he 
 said gently, "and that it will be for me." 
 
 And Eileen watched him go swiftly down the road, 
 as she could remember watching him many, many 
 times before. Then she went back to the house to lie 
 awake thinking till dawn. Divorce, yes, that was the 
 way out, she decided. A divorce could be obtained 
 somewhere, of that she was fairly sure. Even juries 
 had heard enough of such cases as hers to believe her 
 and free her. Or perhaps Alistair Gray would 
 relinquish his claim. He had been kind to her he 
 was being kind still. She lifted her eyes listlessly to 
 the walls of the room. He was leaving her alone, 
 certainly, in the midst of all these lovely things. And 
 
THAT OTHER EILEEN 191 
 
 Victor had not waited. It was only chance that his 
 wife had died and left him free. But had he played 
 fair in coming to her when she had asked him not to? 
 Yet Victor's eager eyes and voice, and his ways that 
 she knew so well and loved so well, had revived all the 
 old love, and even more. A passionate yearning for 
 him that was something new something that made 
 her pulse beat faster something that made nothing 
 else matter. 
 
 And she knew then the answer she would give him 
 the next night. In the morning she got up singing, 
 refreshed as if she had slept the whole night through. 
 That other man, Alistair Gray, whom she hated, had 
 stolen for himself a wife not a real woman. And 
 whose fault was it if that other Eileen, that wife, had 
 gone back into the unreal from whence she came? 
 There was nothing left of her now but these fineries 
 that the real Eileen was wearing, and the expression of 
 wisdom she had noted in the hand mirror. 
 
 She ran to the cheval glass between the windows of 
 her room. No, thank God, that look was gone! She 
 was Eileen Arden again, with the wondering eyes 
 once again a girl and Victor's. The wistful voice 
 deep down in her subconscious self that wanted to be 
 heard whispered for a moment, and then that too was 
 gone. 
 
 "I will never dream of Alistair Gray any more," she 
 rejoiced. It was all over; she had no more scruples 
 or fears. There *as nothing to do now but wait till 
 
192 THAT OTHER EILEEN 
 
 her lover's slim, erect figure came in sight down the 
 road in the moonlight. 
 
 And so at nearly the same hour as before he came. 
 She was watching for him. Eileen had chosen a soft, 
 green gown to wear. "He will like this," she thought, 
 puzzling with the half -memory again. He had liked 
 it, or one like it, long ago. Oh, everything would come 
 back soon! 
 
 He wasted no words this time when he reached her. 
 
 "The decision, Eileen?" he said, holding out his 
 arms. He seemed so confident and he was smiling. 
 
 "I think I belong to you," she said, in a low voice. 
 
 He caught her in his arms hungrily. 
 
 "Let us go in," he said finally. "You will not seem 
 really mine again until you have let me in." 
 
 Into another man's house? She wondered yet 
 without a word she followed him through the French 
 window. One of the maids was standing in the hall. 
 With a gesture of authority he dismissed her and drew 
 Eileen to a seat beside him on a couch. 
 
 "Thank Heaven, you have come back to me, little 
 girl!" he said, with his arm close around her. 
 
 For a moment Eileen rebelled. He was taking 
 everything so absolutely for granted! And she was 
 committing herself to a course of action that she knew 
 was dangerous and disloyal. 
 
 "Don't you think that" It was so difficult to go 
 on, and she faltered and began again. "Don't you 
 think it is wrong to leave Alistair Gray without seeing 
 him without telling him of of our love that I 
 
THAT OTHER EILEEN 193 
 
 never really gave myself to him that I am yours 
 and" 
 
 He caught her to him with a cry almost of terror. 
 "Eileen, dear Eileen 1" 
 
 "What is it?" she gasped, terrified in turn by the 
 note of fear in his voice. 
 
 He put her a little way from him, and held her so, 
 with his hands on her shoulders. 
 
 "Is it worse than we thought?" he muttered to him- 
 self. "Child, who am I?" 
 
 For a moment the world seemed to be going to pieces 
 around her. 
 
 "Isn't there any you?" she gasped. "Have I been 
 mad and imagined it all was there no Victor I was 
 going to marry; was there no Alistair Gray who 
 married me? Oh, whoever you are, tell me tell me 
 what is true ! " 
 
 "That is all true," he said. "There was a Victor 
 you were going to marry there was an Alistair who 
 married you. But answer who do you think I am?" 
 He spoke with a passionate anxiety, his eyes burning 
 down into hers. 
 
 "Aren't you Victor?" she stammered, scarcely 
 able to articulate. 
 
 "My poor little girl!" he said, drawing her to him 
 again, "I am your husband. I'm Alistair Gray. 
 Don't let go of yourself that way, Eileen. Don't 
 faint, it's true." 
 
 She caught at her throat. 
 
 "But I took you for but who was the man in the 
 
194 THAT OTHER EILEEN 
 
 doorway that day I awakened?" she implored. "I saw 
 him the gray man." 
 
 He held her tighter. 
 
 "Good Heavens, Eileen, that was Doctor Blanton! 
 You have seen him since. But I was close behind him. 
 Didn't you see me at all?" 
 
 "I fainted," she said wonderingly. 
 
 He touched her hair soothingly. 
 
 "Poor little woman! Have you been thinking all 
 this time that that half-seen glimpse of Blanton was I? 
 It seems incredible; yet it was perfectly natural after 
 all. But to have thought me that old lover of 
 yours!" There was a half -note of vexation in his 
 voice. "How did you come to saddle me with his 
 name?" 
 
 Eileen, still in his arms, leaned her head on her hus- 
 band's shoulder and thought. 
 
 "I remembered that I was going to marry him," she 
 answered slowly. "It was all dim and faded. And 
 the love for you in my heart, Alistair, and the picture 
 of you printed on all those years of my life must have 
 been so strong that they fused with the name of the 
 man I thought I loved. I can't remember that face at 
 all. Do you know what he looked like?" 
 
 "I have seen him," said Alistair quietly. "He had 
 fair hair and blue eyes rather a saintly type. A good 
 boy. I didn't court you till he'd been married a year, 
 dearest. I didn't think I was wronging you." 
 
 "Oh, don't be humble, Alistair; it isn't like you. 
 You see, I'm remembering now a little. Yes; I do 
 
THAT OTHER EILEEN 195 
 
 remember that face, I think. I'm sorry he wants me 
 again, but " she laughed lightly "he really isn't 
 entitled to me. I'm glad it was he who kept his 
 promise to stay away, not you. Well, he doesn't 
 matter now one way or the other " 
 
 "There is something else for you to remember," he 
 told her presently. But she was not frightened, for 
 he was smiling. What else could possibly happen that 
 was not so? Eileen wondered. 
 
 "Yet there is something," she thought, with a shade 
 of perplexity knitting her forehead, "something that I 
 should remember. Something that held me to you," 
 she said aloud. "Oh, how wonderful that you should 
 be you." 
 
 'Try to think, my dear," he said, with his eyes on 
 hers. "I want you to remember for yourself. Think. 
 Do you remember your room at home? Think of the 
 door that opens from it." 
 
 "Yes," she said obediently, "yes; a door beside the 
 window that opened west" Her brows knit again in 
 the effort of recollection. 
 
 u You are remembering," he said. "I knew it would 
 come of itself, if if I could but have sufficient 
 patience." 
 
 "Poor Alistair!" she said, and the name seemed 
 familiar and dear now. "Was it hard?" 
 
 "Never mind that, dear. Try to remember," he said 
 again. "The door was on the west. Yes; and when 
 you opened that door " 
 
 "I am remembering," she faltered, her face white 
 
196 THAT OTHER EILEEN 
 
 and her hands clenching on his, "in the corner is a 
 draped thing. We were waiting Alistair, Alistair, I 
 remember now!" She sprang to her feet, her eyes 
 blazing. "That was why. Where is it? Where is 
 our baby? Is it safe? Is it alive? Alistair!" 
 
 "Safe alive " he said. "You were delirious for 
 five weeks after he came. Then when you woke you 
 did not remember " 
 
 She clung to him with terror in her eyes. 
 
 "Take me back to him, take me to-night! Oh, 
 Alistair, if I had not remembered!" 
 
 "You were bound to remember," he said. "I knew 
 
 "My dream-love, 
 Wait for her; 
 She'll be true " 
 
 "Can you remember singing it to me?" 
 "To you?" 
 
 "Why, yes," he said marveling. 
 "Then it was all you only you always ! Oh, I am 
 true, Alistair. Can you forgive me?" 
 
ADJUSTMENT 
 
 IT seems a thousand years away now, instead of the 
 short years it is, the time when the officers' dances went 
 on, let alone had just begun. Yet the time was when 
 they were a new thing, and you went to them feeling 
 partly thrilled and partly, unless you had a missionary 
 instinct, not quite decorous. The girls with mission- 
 ary instincts, of course, went complacently, talking 
 largely about being kind to the poor lonely boys. But 
 Cecilia Burden, when she went, and changed her whole 
 life thereby, felt neither like a missionary nor a gay 
 adventurer. She felt like a girl who had done a very 
 foolish and not quite excusable thing. She was always 
 ashamed of herself when her loneliness won out over 
 her pride. 
 
 She had always been a peculiarly lonely person; 
 none the less so because most people considered her 
 very fortunate. Her father and mother had died when 
 she was very little, leaving her well off. There had 
 been no relatives near enough to feel that they should 
 take the little girl into their home. A conscientious 
 but uninterested second cousin had seen to it that she 
 was kept in excellent schools; and she herself had 
 insisted on ending her education in college instead of 
 being fashionably "finished." Nobody but herself 
 knew why she did it. And she did not always admit 
 
 197, 
 
I 9 8 ADJUSTMENT 
 
 the reason even to herself. It was really because she 
 had hoped secretly and desperately that college would 
 give her some friend more genuine and devoted than 
 the fashionable schools afforded; some one who could 
 give her a peephole or perhaps a doorway into a home. 
 All her life she had been starved for home life, for 
 some one who really belonged to her. But she hoped 
 that nobody knew it, quite as hard as she hoped it 
 could happen. 
 
 She was tall and fair and proud-looking; a girl who 
 gave an impression of having everything life could give, 
 and desiring nothing more. And the pride that iced 
 over her loneliness might have gone on thickening all 
 her days if it had not been for the war. 
 
 The year before the war's end moved her, even 
 as it did every one else in America. She felt herself 
 carried forward by the prevailing impetus of friendli- 
 ness, of comradeship with every one. Her wall of 
 shyness and lonely pride melted ever so little; and so 
 it was that when she heard an acquaintance at a formal 
 dinner lamenting her unfilled quota of girls for an 
 officers' dance one night, she had courage to lean across 
 a couple of people and volunteer, even with eagerness. 
 She really wanted to go; she wanted the fun and the 
 excitement of it, and the contact with the men. There 
 would be men there whom she had never seen before 
 and need never see again; men who would be friends 
 for the moment, and with whom there would be no 
 necessity of just what, she would not formulate to 
 herself. .The unformulated feeling was really that 
 
ADJUSTMENT 199 
 
 they could not think she wanted them. It was a little 
 morbid streak that had grown in her because in her 
 heart she knew that her only way to the things she 
 wanted lay through marriage. Because of this secret 
 knowledge she had more and more terror of seeming to 
 make advances, even of the merest friendliness, to men. 
 
 Mrs. Hallett looked a little surprised when perfectly 
 gowned, perfectly poised Miss Burden volunteered to 
 fill in her quota of damsels; Cecilia didn't seem that 
 sort of girl. You could better imagine her efficiently 
 running committees. But she needed Cecilia, and 
 accepted her eagerly and gratefully. And in an hour 
 from then Cecilia found herself taking Mrs. Hallett and 
 three chattering girls down to the clubrooms where the 
 officers waited. She felt ashamed of herself already, 
 and very alien. 
 
 "I hope it will be a good night/' one of the girls 
 confided to her, feeling for a rouge-pad. "You know, 
 they run the queerest way one night you have 
 a perfectly grand time, and the next they're as 
 stupid as can be. Never been before? Oh, you'll 
 like it. The best way's to come regularly, and make 
 dates over." 
 
 The girl, a little yellow-haired thing clad exquisitely 
 in deep blue velvet, chattered on, and Cecilia answered 
 her just enough for courtesy. She felt more and more 
 chilled. After all, was it her sort of thing? Were not 
 the staid dinners and dances of the people she knew, 
 devoid as they were of any chance of novelty or ad- 
 venture, where she really belonged? But she went to 
 
zoo ADJUSTMENT 
 
 the dressing-room and down to the long dancing-rooms 
 with the rest, holding her head all the higher because 
 she felt so ashamed of having come on an impulse. 
 
 The band was excellent, and the dancing had already 
 begun. Her chaperon introduced her quickly to a 
 couple of shy midshipmen, and she whirled out on the 
 floor with one of them. He would have liked better, 
 she was sure, the little yellow-haired thing who had 
 chattered to her on the way down; but at least he was 
 respectful. Indeed, he was so in awe of her he 
 scarcely spoke. The adventure was not exciting so 
 far. 
 
 Her second partner was a gay Southerner, who 
 flattered her mechanically and cheerfully through two 
 sweeping and too-close-held dances, then abandoned 
 her eagerly for a little girl he had made a date with, he 
 said, last time. 
 
 "Mighty nice kids you can pick up at these dances 
 sometimes," he added reflectively; and Cecilia felt 
 annoyed at his too-patronizing tone. After that she 
 tried to sit out. But in those early and strenuous days 
 the chaperons wouldn't let you. She was forced on a 
 big dark Captain of Infantry who scarcely spoke, to 
 her relief, for their first round of the room. Then he 
 looked down at her, and, as if something he saw 
 suddenly waked him into friendship, began to talk 
 began in the very middle of things, pouring out his 
 feelings as only naturally repressed people ever do. 
 He had not talked to any one, he said, for half a year. 
 
 "I like you," he went on in a tone removed from 
 
ADJUSTMENT 201 
 
 rudeness by its detached sincerity. "You're the first 
 woman I've seen to-night that I haven't felt miles away 
 from. And I'm I've simply got to let out to some- 
 body. We mayn't see each other again won't, prob- 
 ably. Do you mind if I act as if I knew you awfully 
 well, and let loose and tell you things?" 
 
 Cecilia shook her head. Her heart beat a little 
 faster. So there were other lonely people in the world. 
 
 "We may never meet again," she echoed. "Say 
 what you want to." 
 
 That was the beginning of everything. Naturally, 
 they met again in two days, and six weeks after that 
 they had married. Things went swiftly in the days 
 of the Great War. 
 
 He was of her own kind and class, and like her, 
 without kith or kin except for one little old cousin in 
 Delaware. He was one of the big, silent men who veil 
 high-strung nerves under a seeming steadiness and 
 stolidity. His straight-looking brown eyes and rather 
 heavy, regular-featured face covered, Cecilia learned 
 before she had seen him three times, a sensitiveness 
 and loneliness greater than her own. In spite of the 
 swiftness of the affair, neither of them had any doubts 
 that they were doing right. And there was no time to 
 doubt on the honeymoon. He went over within a 
 month and ten days after they were married, with the 
 memory of five weeks of absolute happiness. 
 
 Cecilia lived, when he had gone, with the old cousin 
 he had told her of in the South; a gentle, fluttering old 
 lady who admired her and petted her in the pleasantly 
 
202 ADJUSTMENT 
 
 articulate fashion of her kind. The two of them got on 
 well and, after Cecilia had recovered from the first 
 wrench of parting, were very content. The girl had not 
 been a wife long enough to make Lawrence's society so 
 much a habit that she actually suffered from any gap in 
 her life. Her very real affection for him simply made 
 her build her life, with an abandon which she scarcely 
 herself realized, out toward the time of his return. 
 He, and his coming, came to mean to her the fulfilment 
 of all that she had ever missed; he meant to her the 
 home she had never known, the love she had needed so 
 long and so intensely. Presently she found that there 
 was to be a child, and she was almost entirely happy. 
 She lived now in the dream of Lawrence and the child 
 and the home of the future. It came to be, though 
 she did not know it, less love of her husband than of all 
 he would bring her. And time went, and the baby 
 came; and Cecilia, caring for it and writing and receiv- 
 ing long, ecstatic letters, surrounded by the soft de- 
 votion of little old Cousin Lorena, knew more happi- 
 ness than she had thought existed ; but still a happiness 
 founded on what was to come, rather than what was. 
 
 It was a quiet life enough; Cousin Lorena had a 
 round of mild elderly society: a sewing-circle which 
 had been meeting undisturbed since the youth of its 
 members thirty years since, an old beau or so who still 
 called punctiliously in his rounds among the "girls" 
 whom he had known for the same length of time; 
 accustomed attendance at old Dr. Blanton's church, 
 
ADJUSTMENT 203 
 
 where the sermons were long and gentle and rambling, 
 and full of "literary allusions": drives in a carriage 
 with a horse which, though probably not contemporary 
 with the rest of Cousin Lorena's friends, seemed to be. 
 There were younger people, but Cecilia did not seem 
 to care to bother. 
 
 And then came the armistice; and, presently, news 
 that Lawrence was coming home. 
 
 "I can scarcely wait to see you," he wrote. "It 
 seems as if it were forever. . . When I think of 
 getting back to you and our baby it seems like a piece 
 of Heaven. . . ." 
 
 Finally the cable came, with the exact date of his 
 arrival. It would be in New York. Cecilia was in 
 Delaware. 
 
 "We'll see him! We'll see him soon! You shall 
 have your father as soon as I can take you to New 
 York, you darling!" she chanted to the baby of her 
 adoration, bending over him and lifting him up to kiss. 
 
 "Cecilia, darlinM" said old Cousin Lorena's soft 
 voice, a little troubled and remonstrant. "You won't 
 take that baby, will you, all the way to the city, with 
 the change of climate an' all? I think yo' husband 
 comes first." 
 
 Cecilia wheeled, aghastly, the baby in her arms; and 
 at the sudden motion he began to cry. 
 
 "He's like Lawrence awful nervous," warned old 
 Cousin Lorena, undaunted. "An' I don't think you 
 should take so young an infant so far." 
 
204 ADJUSTMENT 
 
 "Not show him to his father? Why, Lawrence is 
 wild to see him. I couldn't lose a minute showing him 
 the baby." 
 
 Cousin Lorena, little and frail against the enormous 
 old-fashioned bureau in the nursery, looked troubled 
 still. 
 
 "Leave him with me, darling," she urged. "He's a 
 bottle baby; it won't be any trouble. An' then you an' 
 Lawrence can have your lovely reunion like lovers." 
 
 Cecilia found herself more impatient with dear little 
 Cousin Lorena than she had ever been since they lived 
 together. What an impossible combination of senti- 
 mentality and expediency these old-fashioned ladies 
 were! And anyway, Cousin Lorena didn't know 
 about being married. And probably it was just that 
 she wanted the baby. Cecilia did not realize how 
 fiercely she adored her baby, nor how near he was to 
 blotting out everything else in her life. She was a 
 woman of strong emotions, who had never thought 
 much about them, nor admitted to them more than she 
 could help. 
 
 At all events, she cabled back joyously to Lawrence, 
 and spent every moment before her departure in buying 
 pretty things for the baby. She was so absorbed in it 
 that she forgot to pack half her own pretty clothes. 
 
 When the time came she took Maynard and his 
 nurse and traveled to New York, where she engaged a 
 suite in a hotel and waited impatiently for the transport 
 to return. 
 
ADJUSTMENT 205 
 
 She found herself sitting in the waiting-room at the 
 actual hour it docked, her heart beating violently. 
 She had to sit still, because of little Maynard, asleep 
 in her arms. She could hear tramplings and laughter 
 and exclamations in the next room, that room where 
 Lawrence must be. One of the voices she heard 
 might be his. Would the physical examination never 
 be over? . . . The noises went on; she could hear 
 doctors giving orders, the heavy footsteps of men, a 
 good deal of swearing and a little laughter. Other 
 women waited around her. She could not bear to 
 speak to them; her whole being was too tense with 
 expectancy. 
 
 The door opened four times, and men came hurried- 
 ly through, looking about eagerly for their womenfolk; 
 each time Cecilia's heart leaped, then subsided with a 
 sick disappointment. The baby, affected by her 
 tension, finally began to whimper. Presently she 
 became absorbed in soothing him. 
 
 It was then, as luck would have it, that Lawrence 
 entered and looked about for her. Her head was bent 
 down over the child, and he did not know her im- 
 mediately. He stared about him impatiently, walked 
 through the room a couple of times in search of her, 
 before either saw the other. Then it was she who 
 looked up, and they saw each other. 
 
 He caught her in his arms then, kissing her openly 
 and hungrily, careless of the waiting people about 
 them. She clung to him closely, scarcely believing 
 
206 ADJUSTMENT 
 
 that it was true, for a minute, or real, so suddenly it 
 had all happened. The baby, more roughly touched 
 than before in all his adored months, began to cry. 
 
 Lawrence jerked back and raised his head, and 
 Cecilia got her first good look at him. He was a little 
 heavier than when he went away; but nevertheless he 
 did not look so well. He was pale under his tan, and 
 the lines of his face sagged. 
 
 "Can't you make that child stop?" he demanded 
 sharply; and then, seeing her shocked look, caught 
 himself up penitently. "I didn't mean to sound so 
 cross, darling. He was so close, and he made such a 
 surprising noise. They they all cry, don't they?" 
 
 He smiled down at her. For a moment he was the 
 old Lawrence. Cecilia had been chilled and jarred, 
 but she smiled back, reassured. 
 
 "They do, once in awhile. This baby of ours has 
 never cried much till now. I suppose I shouldn't have 
 brought him down here with me to-day. But I did 
 want to show him to you." 
 
 "This baby of ours! Lord, that sounds wonderful! " 
 said her husband fervently; and the last touch of chill 
 faded from Cecilia's heart. He was going to love the 
 baby; just as he had said in the letters. 
 
 "Back with you! and all that hellish time over for 
 good. This is like a dream!" Lawrence began, drop- 
 ping in the nearest settee and pulling Cecilia to him, 
 when they had entered their rooms. "Oh, gosh, I 
 forgot that baby! Do you wear him all the time? 
 Put it away, won't you, darling, and talk to me? And 
 
ADJUSTMENT 207 
 
 tell me what shows there are in town. We'll celebrate 
 what do you say?" 
 
 There was a nurse, fortunately. Cecilia rose, with 
 the baby, who had begun to whimper faintly again at 
 Lawrence's unfamiliar touch, and took him in to the 
 room where he slept. She felt faintly chilled, again. 
 Lawrence seemed so different from what she remem- 
 bered him to be. But she went back to him, and 
 discussed theaters with him. 
 
 Things went along gayly for a couple of days. Hav- 
 ing Lawrence back, and hurrying about from gaiety 
 to gaiety with him was delightful at first. But there 
 was the baby. It fretted her secretly that her hus- 
 band did not seem interested in him, and was frankly 
 irritated when he cried. And, whether Cecilia ad- 
 mitted it to herself or not, to her the baby came first. 
 It was hers, after all, and had been hers nearly a year. 
 She'd only had a few weeks of Lawrence. She did not 
 realize this herself, really. She was not much given 
 to thinking things out. 
 
 Lawrence's demands continued to be many, and to 
 detach Cecilia more and more from her much-valued 
 baby. He seemed tired, yet thirsty for change, for 
 amusement, for fresh things and faces. Cecilia did not 
 want any of these things in her heart. The home, the 
 ordered routine of a house, a husband and child 
 children, perhaps were what she wanted, what she 
 waited for impatiently. She had wanted these things 
 all her life. She had believed that they would be hers 
 with Lawrence's return. And now they were ap- 
 
208 ADJUSTMENT 
 
 parently as far away as ever. One night at a dance 
 she asked him, point-blank, why he cared so much 
 more for this sort of thing than for the life they had 
 planned before he left. 
 
 He did not seem to feel that she was reproaching 
 him. He only laughed a little as he explained. 
 
 "Well, we feel we need a little pay for all we've gone 
 through," he told her. "The fuss people make over us 
 is nothing to the way the French worship the poilus. . . . 
 Seems to me people over here don't care an awful lot 
 about it all well, I suppose they weren't where they 
 knew about it. Even you, darling " 
 
 Cecilia flushed up with hurt pride, and stayed care- 
 fully away from him for the rest of the evening. So 
 all he wanted was to be feted! She thought of the 
 staid, responsible Lawrence she had known, and 
 wondered what awful thing the war had done. And 
 she stayed away from him for the rest of the evening, 
 which unfortunately for her plan of punishment he did 
 not seem to mind. . 
 
 The nurse met them on their return with the news 
 that little Maynard seemed ill. Cecilia rushed into 
 his room in a flurry of satin and laces, angry at her- 
 self for going away from him, and at Lawrence for 
 taking her. She stayed up the rest of the night, rather 
 unnecessarily, with her baby. She thought of it as 
 her baby only now. A slow anger was mounting in her 
 at Lawrence. She did not show it, she thought. But 
 she insisted coldly on his going on with his gaieties. 
 She herself stayed up most of the night hours with her 
 
ADJUSTMENT 209 
 
 baby, who seemed no better and no worse as time 
 went on, simply fretful and restless and pulled down. 
 And he cried more continuously than even Cecilia had 
 thought any baby could cry. The doctor said that 
 the child would be all right when he got back to the 
 air and water he was accustomed to. As a matter 
 of fact he would get acclimated to New York, if she 
 would have patience, and keep him outdoors as much 
 as possible. 
 
 Lawrence showed no sign of wishing to let up in 
 his round of engagements. He did show signs of 
 growing irritation with the baby's continuous wailings. 
 And Cecilia continued to hold on to herself, though 
 with a growing feeling of hopelessness. She clung 
 to the hope ahead, of the time when they should go 
 back home, and things should straighten out, and 
 the baby get well and happy and rosy again, and 
 Lawrence go back to his business and settle into the 
 routine of life with her. She thought that if he said, 
 "Good Lord, can't you stop that child?" once more, 
 she would go to pieces. 
 
 She was walking up and down the room with the 
 child, feeling that she could not be patient much 
 longer without at least one outburst of frankness 
 and also that she had been far too patient as it was 
 patting it mechanically to make it stop whimpering. 
 And as she walked and thought and patted Lawrence 
 walked into the room, a note in his hand. 
 
 "Cecilia," he said abruptly, "I can't stand the way 
 that child howls much longer. I'm going down to 
 
210 ADJUSTMENT 
 
 Baltimore to a house party I've been asked to. I 
 know God alone could separate you from that baby, 
 so the only thing I can suggest is that you take him 
 back to Cousin Lorena's." 
 
 Cecilia stopped short, staring at him with a dread- 
 ful cold feeling about her heart. So this was the 
 end! 
 
 It fell on her from an absolutely clear sky. It had 
 never dawned on her that Lawrence, in spite of his 
 altered ways, was anything but devoted to her under- 
 neath. It had never occurred to her that he would 
 deliberately do so inexcusable a thing as he planned. 
 He did not love her, apparently. That he did not love 
 the baby had been sinking into her consciousness 
 bitterly for a week. 
 
 She said nothing. She merely continued her 
 mechanical movement of soothing the crying child, 
 staring at her husband over his little contorted face. 
 
 "You don't care a bit for me," he half accused, half 
 defended, in the way that was so unlike the good, 
 responsible, courteous man she had married. "You 
 only care for that screaming child. It hasn't made 
 the least difference to you that he was driving me 
 mad." 
 
 "Neither of us will ever annoy you again," was all 
 she found to say, speaking with difficulty through 
 stiff lips. She felt frozen and heavy all over, and 
 as if she were going through some horrible thing in 
 a dream. She dimly heard him telling her in a half- 
 frightened voice not to take it so seriously, not to act 
 
ADJUSTMENT 211 
 
 that way about it but she could not answer him. She 
 merely put out one repelling hand, then turned and 
 went away from him to the farthest room of their 
 suite. She felt in that moment of dull and frightened 
 anger, of the world going to pieces around her, that 
 she never wanted to see or speak to Lawrence again. 
 She felt, too, that this was the end. 
 
 He came in several times while she was packing, 
 and tried to speak to her, to explain, but she simply 
 shook her head. He seemed a thousand miles away 
 from her. 
 
 She clung all the more fiercely to her baby, as she 
 went on her way down, back to Cousin Lorena's. The 
 nurse might as well not have been along, for all the 
 care she needed to take of it. Waking or sleeping, 
 Cecilia never let it out of her sight. Over the little 
 whimpering thing her eyes would stare unseeingly 
 ahead, and she would think and think and think, in 
 circles that took her back just where she had begun. 
 
 So this was the end of her married life the life 
 that she had thought would make up to her for every- 
 thing she had ever starved for, in her long, mute lone- 
 liness. This was the end nothing left but the baby. 
 And he was going to be a man too, some day, a man 
 who might break her heart and disappoint and dis- 
 illusion her. . . . She was the kind of woman, appar- 
 ently, who could not hold a man. . . . How much love 
 did Lawrence have for her, if a crying baby could 
 make him turn and go away from her that way? 
 What sort of despicable person was he? 
 
212 ADJUSTMENT 
 
 Sitting in the train calmly, her clear-cut, pale face 
 a quiet mask, her mind flung itself despairingly from 
 phase to phase of her problem . . . though why she 
 considered it a problem she did not know. She felt 
 subconsciously that there was more to it that there 
 was a key, if she only knew it; some way out at least 
 with self-respect. She could not respect herself, as it 
 was, and she knew she hated and despised Lawrence. 
 And the worst of it was she loved him, she knew that 
 now that they were parted in a way that made reunion 
 very unlikely. She loved him more than she did the 
 baby. And he he had cared so little for her that 
 he'd left her because he didn't like to hear the baby 
 cry! . . . 
 
 "No, he won't come back," she said to herself 
 with a dreadful certainty. 
 
 She sat on, feeling very young and lost and alone; 
 very wrecked. She did not want the baby as much 
 as she wanted her husband. . . . Her husband was 
 not worth wanting. . . . She had lost her chance of 
 keeping him on account of the baby. . . . But the 
 baby was all she had. . . . 
 
 She was too proud to do very much explaining to 
 Cousin Lorena. She did a little enough to make the 
 little fluttering old lady's face turn paler, and to make 
 her hesitate a little before she answered naturally. 
 But she did answer naturally. Cousin Lorena was a 
 sport; you had to admit that. 
 
 "Lawrence has gone to a house-party," was all 
 Cecilia said. "So far as I could discover, he didn't 
 
ADJUSTMENT 213 
 
 want me and the baby along. He suggested that we 
 leave him and come down here." 
 
 "My dear child! " was all Cousin Lorena said. "But 
 there, I know how things are. It hurt your feelings 
 a little, I can see that. . . . Well, there, we won't 
 talk about it." 
 
 Which was exactly what Cecilia had wished for, 
 but had not dared to hope. There was no use, if it 
 could be avoided, going into things with Cousin 
 Lorena. She was only going to stay with her a few 
 days, anyway; just long enough to give little Maynard 
 a chance to pick up, and to pack up her own things. 
 She had got no further in her plans than return to 
 New York, and a temporary stay at some hotel, 
 while she could make new plans. For the baby's 
 sake it would be better to find a place in the 
 country. . . . She must think of the baby, and nothing 
 else. . . . This was, of course, not possible. She 
 thought of Lawrence and her own tragedy all day 
 long; and if she managed to forget for a little while 
 by day, at length, she dreamed about it all night. 
 
 Cousin Lorena assumed, both to her and to the 
 people about, that Lawrence would follow his wife 
 and child in a few days. Cecilia was wild to be off 
 herself, and end the tension, but the baby, after a 
 couple of days' health, began to fret again. It was 
 partly in sympathy with her own unhappiness, no 
 doubt. The doctor said it was also because the jour- 
 ney had upset him. It would be a couple of weeks 
 at least before he could travel. 
 
214 ADJUSTMENT 
 
 Cecilia felt that she simply could not stand any 
 more of all this; the gentle inquiries as to what she 
 had heard from her husband, the pleasant stories of 
 his boyhood, the general atmosphere of being Law- 
 rence's wife still. She wanted to go where she could 
 forget about it all till the wound was less raw. Dr. 
 Blanton who had a habit of pastoral visits which must 
 have kept him driving about all day, so far as she 
 could see, curiously enough was the only exception 
 to the flood of reminiscence. Whether it was that 
 he was too absent-minded to remember that remarks 
 about a husband were the correct thing to offer a 
 young wife, or that his interest in his own conversa- 
 tion, which was generally about things he had read 
 in books no one else had ever heard of, prevented 
 him from thinking of other people, Cecilia could not 
 tell, but she rather thought it was the latter. But 
 because of his obliviousness to everything but imper- 
 sonalities, she began to cling to him more than she 
 knew. He called on Cousin Lorena with a frequency 
 that made Cecilia, wrapped as she was in her own 
 trouble, begin to wonder if he had "intentions." But 
 she, Cecilia, always found herself drifting down to 
 where they sat with palm-leaf fans, exchanging bits 
 of amusing anecdotes, usually, one found, about people 
 long-dead, but still discussed with friendly laughter 
 and affection. 
 
 The old parlor was very dim and cool, and one 
 afternoon Cecilia established herself in a rocker there 
 with the baby, who seemed fretful anywhere but out 
 
ADJUSTMENT 215 
 
 of her arms. He had fallen asleep, finally, and she, 
 tired with the sudden and unseasonable heat, fell 
 asleep too the light sleep mothers know, holding the 
 baby fast. 
 
 She was in an alcove, where she could neither see 
 nor be seen. If she rose she would wake the baby, 
 who had not had much sleep the night before. So 
 when the low murmur of voices awoke her, she sat 
 where she was. It was only old Dr. Blanton, calling 
 as usual. Cecilia smiled to herself in lazy amusement. 
 Well, if he did "co't" Cousin Lorena, both of them 
 would marry nice enough people. Kind people, if a 
 little could one call it remote? No, remote was not 
 the word (the thoughts glided sleepily through her 
 mind, lulled to a pleasant daze by the afternoon sleep) 
 for their childlike chattering interest in men and girls 
 long buried or grandparents. Dim, rather. Like a 
 quaint old painting of conventionalized people. She 
 wondered, as she wakened more, and roused to her 
 wonted bitterness, what either of them would do or 
 say if she hurled her raw problem at them. Tell her 
 that people didn't do such things, doubtless, to quote 
 Ibsen they'd probably just about heard of him, down 
 here. Well, she wouldn't hurl it. It was good to sit 
 here in the shaded light, watching the glass drops 
 swinging in the light breeze from the chandelier, and 
 a stray waver of sunlight playing on the dulled gilt 
 flowers of the wall-paper: hearing the pleasant, unhur- 
 ried elderly voices talking of things which had ceased 
 to matter thirty years gone. If she listened perhaps 
 
216 ADJUSTMENT 
 
 it would keep her from thinking about Lawrence for 
 a little while. 
 
 "... No, my dear Miss Lorena, for once your 
 memory is at fault! It was not Aunt Jenny Lou; she 
 was older. It was Aunt India." 
 
 "Yes; I was wrong. They called her the White 
 Rose of Germantown, I remember my mother saying. 
 She married a Pennsylvanian, if I remember aright. 
 It was she who was painted as Di Vernon in the Walter 
 Scott album." 
 
 "Yes, she was the one. She was only about ten 
 years older than I. I can remember her, at the close 
 of the war, a very beautiful young woman." 
 
 "Ah, there were knights in those days!" said Miss 
 Lorena's gentle little thrilled voice. "She was the 
 one. He wore her glove pinned to his hat through 
 everything; and when it was carried off by a stray 
 shot he rode back into the melee and risked his life 
 to get it. And he wasn't even one of our own South- 
 ern young men ! It is a wonderful story, Dr. Blanton. 
 I have always loved it." 
 
 "I can remember when he came back from war, 
 though." Dr. Blanton was off on one of his inter- 
 minable tales. But the thin old voice was pleasant in 
 Cecilia's ears, and she listened idly. "But I don't 
 remember the glove. He came to get her in my grand- 
 parents' house, where she had waited for him; they 
 had just been married before the last year of the war, 
 you know. I can remember the excitement; Aunt 
 India had been shopping. Shopping was a state matter 
 
ADJUSTMENT 217 
 
 then. She and grandmother had discussed what he 
 should see her in first, by the day. Finally they 
 bought a green silk, because he liked her best in green; 
 and they made it up. I can see it now. I think I was 
 a bit jealous of Uncle Jacob; I adored Aunt India, 
 and I must have tried to learn her looks by heart, 
 that evening when they expected him. It had white 
 lace low over her shoulders, and sprays of white arti- 
 ficial roses catching it up in loops. He had written 
 how he longed to see her in all her silken beauty. 
 That was what he called it silken beauty. Good 
 heavens, how young he would seem to me now! He 
 couldn't have been more than twenty-three: she was 
 a good deal younger than that. Then, of course, he 
 seemed a thousand years old and seven feet high. . . . 
 He was tall, and very handsome. Drooping mustache 
 and big dark eyes; eyes like the ones they had in my 
 boyhood seem to have gone out, in men and women 
 both, by the way. I wonder why." 
 
 "I have noticed that, too," said Miss Lorena inter- 
 estedly. "And gentlemen never seem to have color 
 nowadays. I can remember my brothers; they all 
 had such bright color. Gentlemen did then." 
 
 "Psycho-analysis would doubtless tell us," said Dr. 
 Blanton scornfully. He did not like it much. "Ah, 
 well. She waited alone in the parlor to meet him; and 
 he came hurrying in. And when we heard, from the 
 sitting-room, his voice, saying angrily, 'My God, how 
 do you dare stand there in those costly garments, when 
 I've been cutting off my boys' legs and arms while 
 
218 ADJUSTMENT 
 
 they shrieked in anguish, for lack of money to buy 
 them chloroform! 7 And then poor young Aunt India 
 came running in to my grandmother with a look of 
 horror on her face." 
 
 "Oh, dear me!" asked Miss Lorena's awed voice, 
 "How dreadful what was the matter?" 
 
 (Cecilia sat upright, her heart beating hard. She 
 wanted to go and find that long dead girl, to put her 
 arms around her and tell her that she too had been 
 through the same agony and disillusion. ... It was 
 like her own story.) 
 
 By the sound of his voice Cecilia could tell that 
 as Dr. Blanton answered he was smiling. 
 
 "I can still hear my grandmother's voice," he said. 
 "She was a good woman and a strong one too strong, 
 I thought then, seeing her holding up poor hurt young 
 Aunt India, and holding her shoulders and talking to 
 her sharp and loud, as you talk to some one you're 
 trying to waken from a drug. 'India,' she said. 'Just 
 hold on. Jacob's come back to you out of the dark 
 ages. He's been at war, and when men have enough 
 war they're not civilized for awhile, sometimes. Here 
 he's back in civilized Germantown, and it's a jar. His 
 nerves are all wrong: give him time, and he'll be all 
 right again. Don't feel as if he really has sense 
 about it. Give him a chance to adjust himself and 
 it will come right.' ' 
 
 "Oh, how terrible!" said Miss Lorena. 
 
 "Yes ... in a way it was terrible. All things are 
 that go with war. But my grandmother made her 
 
ADJUSTMENT 219 
 
 realize what the matter was. Grandfather had been 
 in the Mexican war, you see." 
 
 "Did it come right?" asked Miss Lorena. "Good- 
 ness, I hope things like that don't happen these 
 days . . . but they couldn't, with all the modern in- 
 ventions." 
 
 ". . . But they have sought out many inventions," 
 quoted Dr. Blanton. "I hope not often, my dear 
 Lorena. Yes ... it was terribly hard for poor Aunt 
 India for awhile, I think. But she went with him to 
 their home, and I am sure that things straightened 
 gradually out. At least, as I remember Uncle Jacob 
 he was a very kind man, and loved her dearly. They 
 were very happy together. I can see her now, in 
 the green dress. . . ." 
 
 Cecilia sat on, swaying the baby unconsciously. 
 He had waked, but for a wonder was quiet. The 
 little rasping wail had fretted her more than she 
 knew; its cessation was a relief. The old people were 
 talking on; they had passed to Aunt Jenny Lou now. 
 
 "Dark ages . . . his nerves . . . adjustment . . . 
 give him time . . . he'll adjust. . . ." 
 
 And she hadn't known and she hadn't known! 
 Why Lawrence wasn't a despicable wretch, after all 
 he was only a sick man! And she wasn't a woman 
 whose marriage was a humiliating failure: she'd simply 
 been ignorant. Life mightn't be a shipwreck after all. 
 Things had a chance to come straight. And even if 
 it was only a fighting chance, why happiness for two 
 people was worth fighting for. She rose from her 
 
220 ADJUSTMENT 
 
 chair, her usually pale cheeks scarlet with excitement, 
 and walked into the other part of the room, where 
 Dr. Blanton and Miss Lorena swayed in their rockers, 
 talking on. 
 
 "Cousin Lorena," she said, "I'm going to leave 
 Maynard with you. I think I had better go down 
 to Baltimore, where Lawrence is. Will you look after 
 him?" 
 
 After Cousin Lorena had made her fluttered, yet 
 efficient arrangements, and carried the baby upstairs 
 with the pride of a child given a sacred trust, Cecilia 
 looked at Dr. Blanton. 
 
 "I think that will be a very pleasant thing to do, 
 my dear," was all he said. "I'm sure you'll be glad." 
 
 But Cecilia looked straight at him. 
 
 "You are quite right," she said, "and thank you 
 for explaining." 
 
 He looked back at her quite simply, and laughed 
 his little kind, high laugh. 
 
 "My dear, you are a very good and intelligent 
 girl," he said. "All you needed was to know." 
 
THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 
 
 ONE month after Richard Maclane was invalided 
 home from his relief work in Russia one month after 
 he brought her the little images he broke his en- 
 gagement with Valla Harfager. 
 
 It was not the sort of thing which was an ordinary 
 happening in that little Main Line town. Most people 
 there were more or less other people's cousins, or 
 at least friends because their great grandfathers had 
 been, and therefore every one took an interest in 
 things that happened. It was felt that something 
 ought to be done about it: Arden Garrison, the young 
 rector, who had been Richard's close friend before 
 he went away, was supposed to have tried to talk to 
 him about it. His uncle, Dr. Blanton, being older, 
 and one of those gentle souls whom it is difficult to 
 snub, did. Even old Whitall, who, since he had taken 
 over the mastership of the Green Valley Hounds rarely 
 talked of much else, said "damn shame/' not only to 
 others, but to Richard Maclane himself. As for 
 Richard, his face was more and more haggard, and he 
 avoided An drey Kerkoff, naturally, but he went des- 
 perately on his way. Some of the younger men said 
 that they might have done the same thing. But it 
 was an inexcusable thing from most viewpoints. He 
 
 221 
 
222 THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 
 
 and Valla had been friends and lovers since childhood* 
 Valla was beautiful, good and charming. 
 
 It was because of that little devil of a Mary Bel- 
 lamy, of course. He had the grace to be honest with 
 Valla about that: though, indeed, it was hard to be 
 otherwise than honest with Valla at any time. She was 
 like that; still, strong, quiet, like Brunhild to look at, 
 broad-shouldered, long-limbed, and crowned with yel- 
 low hair. The Harfagers had been Norse before they 
 had been English, though they had been English for 
 some centuries before they became Quakers and left 
 with Penn for America. The thousand-year-old Norse 
 strain showed strongly in them still. Valla was named, 
 indeed, for one of these Valas Wise Women whom 
 their tradition said had come from Norway as some 
 wild chief's counselor. According to the tradition 
 there had been more than one of these Valas; the 
 prophetess strain had come down from mother to 
 daughter, woman after yellow-haired, white-armed 
 woman who had ridden by their chiefs in battle and 
 prophesied to them in peace. She was like what they 
 must have been. You could not think of her as being 
 broken like other women, even by a grief like this. 
 
 Perhaps that was the trouble. If she could have 
 let go and have wept and shuddered and implored, 
 Richard might, even in his overwrought state, have 
 dragged himself free of Mary's feverish, heady fasci- 
 nations, and been held steady by the deep old things 
 between him and Valla. But back of Valla were eleven 
 generations of Friends, with their tradition of repres- 
 
THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 223 
 
 sion. He had no way of knowing, as she sat facing 
 him with steady eyes on his, and a face that only 
 whitened, did not change, that she felt as if she were 
 going through a hard death. He believed, as many 
 people who should know better believe, that to be 
 a Friend is to have less capacity for emotion than 
 the normal man or woman. And yet in those eleven 
 generations because of whom Valla Harfager came 
 to sit unshakenly before her immeasurable grief, there 
 had been people who had done strange things because 
 of a feeling in their heart. There had been prophet- 
 esses, yellow-haired, white-armed women of great 
 houses, who had gone out to cry to the rabble of 
 doom that should fall on them, because of the white 
 fire in their hearts: who had let themselves be torn 
 to pieces, smiling, when the doom fell. There had 
 been gentlefolk born to lordship, who had wandered 
 starving in desolate places for their belief's sake. 
 There had been gray-eyed girls, almost children, of 
 whom it was told that they had been taken from their 
 mothers to be scourged through cruel New England 
 towns: girls who had gone to hard deaths unmoved 
 because of what they could see apportioned by God 
 to their judges. 
 
 Valla, as she sat staring ahead of her at the little 
 images Richard had given her, might have been one 
 of those long dead, doom-bringing women. But 
 Richard only saw her quietude, and heard the height 
 of love and selflessness that was, as always, in her 
 answer. It was a strange answer for a woman to 
 
224 THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 
 
 make, if she had not had the naked honesty of the 
 Friends in her tradition and very fiber. A man less 
 jaded and overworn would have felt the terrific power 
 of her; but Richard was too wearied with all he had 
 gone through to be touched by anything less overt 
 than the whiplike stimulation of young Mary Bellamy's 
 barren vividness and bright insolences. Mary was 
 what the whole world had been in the years while she 
 reached girlhood; living at fever-heat always, mad for 
 the love and excitement of the moment. So he heard 
 Valla untouched save by a feeling of guiltiness which 
 was not strong enough to keep him from his desires. 
 
 "Of course I will release you, Richard," was what 
 Valla said steadily. "That is, as far as you and I 
 have anything to do with it. It is borne in on me, 
 as things have sometimes been on people of my faith, 
 that we belong with each other, and nothing you can 
 think you wish, or I can grant, can really free us 
 from one another, and that you will know it one day. 
 I shall always belong to you. If you can belong to 
 another woman, you are as far free as I can make 
 you free." 
 
 The utter steadiness and utter love in her voice 
 went all through him. For a moment he felt con- 
 sciously the current of her power. Then another 
 spell came back, the physical pull of Mary Bellamy's 
 strong little bold hands and scarlet provocative lips 
 and sweeping, insolent gaiety. He never remembered 
 how the scene ended; only that presently he was gone, 
 still hungry to be with Mary as a drunkard is hungry 
 
THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 225 
 
 for brandy, but with a hurting picture of Valla un- 
 shakably present to him; Valla, as he had seen her 
 for one betraying moment after she thought he had 
 gone, flung to her full height, her arms tossed above 
 her head and her gray eyes as unseeing as her lips 
 were drawn. 
 
 Of Valla, a moment later, bowed head on her tall 
 mantel, with her outstretched hands unconsciously 
 clenching the little images that were set at its ends, 
 his last gift to her the Little Queens of Death. 
 
 He did not know their names, or call them so to 
 himself then, as he went away wretchedly to Mary 
 Bellamy. It was Andrey Kerkoff, weeks later, who 
 named them so to Valla; who named them so months 
 later to more than Valla. 
 
 He was an exotic personality for that little quietly 
 proud and provincial Pennsylvania town; more exotic 
 than Mary Bellamy. The girls who were jealous of 
 her said that the whole tangle was the sort of thing 
 Mary enjoyed, for her vanity's sake, more than any- 
 thing in the world; that if Kerkoff had not come 
 there because he was Richard's friend, and she had 
 not been engaged to him, the taking of Richard would 
 not have amused her half so much, or been half so 
 worth while. He had escaped from Russia, after suf- 
 fering things that the normal Americans about him felt 
 secretly were rather indecent to have done to you 
 too like the melodrama which normal people forget 
 is as real as normality. Richard, with that impulsive 
 generosity and lovableness of his, had financed Ker- 
 
226 THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 
 
 koff, helped him away, accredited him to friends in 
 his own town, and even taken him to live in his 
 house after his own return. Richard was his only 
 tie in America. 
 
 In the two months he preceded Richard, he had 
 been fascinated by Mary, and she had promised to 
 marry him. There was something in the girl, young 
 as she was only seventeen, for all her decadence 
 that drew and was drawn by the overwrought, the 
 abnormal. When she first met Kerkoff her court of 
 college lads had been flung to the winds. To be sure 
 Kerkoff, with his tall, drilled slimness and his slanting 
 green eyes below a mop of curly hair, not to speak 
 of his Guardsman manners, had moved most of her 
 friends the same way. But the obvious nerve-shat- 
 teredness of him, the curious little jerky or tragic 
 words and ways that had peeped out after the first, had 
 repelled most of the other girls. He was "queer." 
 Mary apparently had liked him for it, and the engage- 
 ment was a fact accomplished when Richard came 
 back. The fact that Kerkoff took everything harder 
 than most men, had been through enough tragedy for 
 two lifetimes already, and had pinned every bit of 
 hope and faith and belief he had left to her and Rich- 
 ard, may not have occurred to her, or simply may 
 not have mattered if it did. She thrust her greedy 
 little baby-vamp hands deep into the web of things 
 and was apparently rather amused at the horrible 
 crash and tangle she made. Richard was too blind- 
 
THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 227 
 
 drunk with her to know very much but that she was 
 his and he could marry her. He may have been the 
 only man in the place who did not know that she had 
 finished the wrecking of Andrey Kerkoff, horribly, 
 spectacularly. It was rather unfair that the town at 
 large was angrier at Mary on Valla's account than 
 on Audrey's, for certainly Andrey was broken to bits, 
 and Valla, for all the world could see, went steadily 
 on her way. 
 
 And then the wildest thing of all came to be known. 
 It is a tribute to the esteem her world held Valla in 
 that nobody thought it in the least amusing. Only 
 very superb on Valla's part and a little contemptible 
 if piteous in Andrey's. Andrey Kerkoff spent 
 practically every moment of his time with Valla Har- 
 fager. 
 
 It could not have been the easiest thing in the 
 world for Valla to have him walking up and down 
 her floor, raving about Mary. It must have been an 
 added turn of the screw for her to hear about the 
 other girl's unforgettable power and searing charm 
 and wonderful kisses, and all the rest of the details 
 poor Kerkoff's sick, love-hungry lips poured out by 
 the hour. He was as past reserve as a man in delirium. 
 
 "Oh, my dear, why do you let that dreadful man 
 come, and talk to you about things you'd better for- 
 get?" begged her mother, coming on Valla after one 
 of these visits. The girl was lying back in her chair, 
 just as Kerkoff had left her. She was quiet, as always; 
 
228 THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 
 
 but there were rings of exhaustion around her eyes, 
 and her strong white hands lay laxly on the mahog- 
 any arms. 
 
 "I have a good deal of strength, and he has very 
 little," said Valla's drawn lips. "If he did not have 
 the relief of talking of it he might do something very 
 wrong." 
 
 "You will have nono too much if you keep on this 
 way," said her mother. She was not herself of Quaker 
 stock, but a pretty, demonstrative woman who laughed 
 when she was happy, and cried out when she was hurt, 
 and could never quite understand her husband and 
 daughter. 
 
 Valla lifted herself in the chair, and seemed to drag 
 her eyes away to look at her mother. She had been 
 staring unseeingly at the little images Richard had 
 given her. 
 
 "It's all I can do," she said simply. "Richard is 
 shaken and unlike himself, and wrecked by the dread- 
 ful war-things: but they have wrenched him so far 
 away from me that I cannot help him yet. I can help 
 this poor soul. It is the nearest I can come to doing 
 something for Richard." 
 
 Her eyes went again to the little images. 
 
 They were heavily built little women carved of some 
 dark wood, that had become darker by time. The 
 carving was clumsy, like a child's: the painted eyes 
 stared, and the thick lips, still faintly reddened, were 
 set cruelly. They were not quite alike: one would 
 say sisters. On each of the heads sat a crown, the 
 
THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 229 
 
 sort of crown chess-queens have: their arms were 
 clenched back of them at their sides, as if on some 
 invisible thing that nothing could let go. They had 
 stiff, flaring wooden skirts. Except the crowns, there 
 was no other semblance of ornament, but around their 
 waists and wrists and shoulders were grooves, as if 
 there had once been something there. Something 
 a breast-ornament perhaps had been on the flat 
 naked chests, painted a curious pied color: across 
 half both sullen faces and arms were traces of dull 
 blue. The rest might have been flesh color once on 
 a time. They were grotesque, yet with all their clum- 
 siness not laughable; sinister, somehow. A strange 
 thing to bring home a girl from abroad; but Valla 
 seemed to have had a strange fancy to them, from the 
 first. 
 
 "You aren't taking this like a normal girl. In 
 your place I should throw those hideous little dolls 
 out of the window, say Richard was a good riddance, 
 and come to Canada. You know we've been planning 
 the trip for ages. Come, dearest, take mother's 
 advice." 
 
 As Mrs. Harfager spoke she gave a vicious push to 
 the nearest of the images. Valla put out a swift hand 
 to steady it. 
 
 "You mustn't touch them. He gave them to me, 
 when everything was still right. . . . When I look at 
 them, it seems somehow as if everything were still right 
 underneath. I suppose they take me back. ..." She 
 smiled a little and began playing with them absently 
 
230 THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 
 
 where she stood by the mantel, clasping her bracelets 
 around the grooves in the stiff waists, where something 
 seemed to have once been. "Even if they weren't 
 from him, I believe I would love them. Haven't you 
 ever come across things, mother, or places, that made 
 you feel as if they had always been yours, and always 
 would be as if they were what you needed to make 
 you complete?" 
 
 She spoke dreamily, still holding the images. 
 
 "I never have," said her mother, the more sharply 
 that she was unhappy about her daughter. "And I 
 certainly could not begin on those hideous things." 
 
 She gave her daughter a half -loving, half -angry 
 little shake, and went hurriedly out. As she did the 
 nearest of the images, jarred, perhaps, by her step, 
 fell from its corner and struck her shoulder sharply 
 with its base. 
 
 "Hateful thing!" said the mother; but she picked 
 it up, with a good housewife's instinct, and replaced it. 
 She went away then. Valla stayed on where she was. 
 But when she came out, an hour later, she looked so 
 bright and well that her mother commented on it. She 
 said she had been asleep. 
 
 She forgot to remove the bracelets from the Little 
 Queens, or perhaps she did not want to. And Ker- 
 koff, prowling up and down the room as was his habit, 
 noticed them, for the first time, when he came next 
 to haunt her. He was looking worse, febrile and 
 haggard. But she thought it was a good sign that he 
 could notice something outside himself. He talked 
 
THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 231 
 
 fragmentarily of Mary Bellamy. He had been walk- 
 ing up and down outside her house. He began to tell 
 Valla how he had seen her, love-making with Richard, 
 night after night. 
 
 "There's a little hole in their shade," he said with 
 a short wild laugh. "I can see. For three hours last 
 night" 
 
 She stopped him. There are limits to every one's 
 endurance. 
 
 "You must go away," she said, as her mother had 
 said to her. "You are driving yourself mad." 
 
 "No. I cannot." He whirled on her, carrying the 
 war into the enemy's country. "You do not go. Why? 
 I do not ask, for I know. You are held here because 
 of that man, who was cruel to you because he is 
 chained to Mary, as I am chained. Only you are 
 stronger, for some reason I cannot guess. ... I am 
 held by Mary. I hate her as much as I love her. Who 
 knows what is love and what is hate? They are two 
 pieces of one thing. I lie awake at night, fancying 
 her lying in my arms, kissing me and saying she 
 loves me. And then I fancy her lying dead, at other 
 times, never to belong to any one again. I do not 
 know which gives me the most comfort." 
 
 She bent over him, one strong hand on his shoul- 
 der, where he had sunk down by a couch, his head 
 in his hands. 
 
 "You must stop having those feelings," she told 
 him. "They are worse for you than for Mary. It 
 is true I stay here. But it is because I am one of 
 
232 THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 
 
 the women who loves always, having once given love. 
 I do not hate Richard. I love him so much that I 
 know all this is unreal, passing; that my power of 
 love will draw him back to me, and all this be as if 
 it had never been. You must do this too. Wait for 
 that time. Love makes things, where hate breaks them 
 in pieces," 
 
 He looked up at her the half-terrified, half-fierce 
 look of an animal. 
 
 "Tell me, you who are so strong, so powerful- 
 ah, yes, it is true what you say, however the power 
 came what do you want of Mary, how do you feel 
 to Mary?" 
 
 She answered him with her strange frankness, her 
 eyes falling into their old unseeingness. 
 
 "I cannot tell. I do not know. She does not seem 
 to me like a person, to be hated. Only a dreadfulness 
 that has done something to my Richard. Something 
 that will pass something that will be gone. . . ." 
 
 Andrey shuddered, looking up at her fascinatedly. 
 
 "It is worse than what I feel for her. . . . My God, 
 why have I turned to you for help, you " 
 
 He stopped short, staring as if he saw something 
 terrifying behind her. Then he began to laugh. 
 
 "So it is no wonder you are strong, with these for 
 counselors! Oh, you are very strong and very clever! 
 You speak of love and forgiveness, and you stay 
 here with these" 
 
 He pointed to the mantel. 
 
 "You are talking wildly," she said, looking down 
 
THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 2 33 V 
 
 into his eyes. "I keep those Richard gave them 
 to me. That is all." 
 
 He shivered a little, and dropped his head sub- 
 missively. 
 
 "Yes. I am talking wildly, I suppose. But we be- 
 lieve in such things, at home at what was once home. 
 An evil icon will do more than a good one, and more 
 powerful than any are the Little Queens of Death. 
 But after all you are not of Rurik's race." 
 
 She spoke to him soothingly. 
 
 "No. No indeed. We are Norse, far back, we Har- 
 fagers. My ancestresses, they say, were Valas, Norse 
 wise women, from grandmother to granddaughter. 
 Never Russians at all." 
 
 He sat back on his haunches, a half-grotesque, 
 clutching figure. He began to laugh a little, softly. 
 
 "He brought it on himself, he made you the gift: 
 and you are of the same blood as of Rurik Rurik 
 the Norseman! I know now where I have seen 
 you. . . . No, I am not going mad. It is not mad- 
 ness, is it, to remember a fresco that was like you, 
 in the Russian city that was a capital in Rurik's day? 
 It was in a palace, on a wall. It was you on a great 
 white horse. Your yellow hair was in two sheaves 
 bound with gold straps. On either side of your horse's 
 head-stall stood one of the little Queens of Death." 
 
 Valla looked at him, rapt. 
 
 "You mean these?" 
 
 "These. They were the little goddesses of Rurik; 
 carved by some Russian slave, it may be, but set 
 
234 THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 
 
 always on the head-stalls when his women counselors 
 rode into battle with him. . . . Yes, he had women 
 counselors, beautiful and young, like you, with sheaves 
 of yellow hair. Wise and chaste they were, and strong 
 like men. And they had hands which could beckon 
 the Little Queens of Death to send hell and ven- 
 geance on their enemies. . . . Even now the stories 
 are told in the old babouschas' huts at night. It was 
 not well to come between the Counselors and their 
 desires, my own nurse told me. . . . Hell and venge- 
 ance . . . you can afford to talk to me with your 
 lips of love and forgiveness, you who are, after all 
 the centuries, still taking counsel with your Little 
 Queens of Death!" 
 
 He was in a pitiable state, for all his effort to be 
 quiet. Valla laid her hand on his shoulder again, 
 and looked steadily into his eyes. 
 
 "You are losing control over yourself," she said 
 steadily. "You must stop talking and get hold of 
 yourself. You must obey me. Be quiet, Andrey." 
 
 He gradually relaxed under her hand. His lips 
 closed firmly, and his face set. Then he crumpled 
 to the floor, and lay there with his eyes shut. He 
 struggled for a little, then lay quietly, as if asleep. 
 She looked at him, wondering. It might have been 
 a sudden swoon from nervous exhaustion. But it 
 seemed more like sleep, and she decided not to try 
 to wake him. She lifted him in her arms, for she was 
 very strong, and laid him on a couch, standing over 
 him, watching him. 
 
THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 235 
 
 He opened his eyes presently. He looked at her 
 without surprise, and spoke in a monotone. 
 
 "I am losing control over myself. I must stop 
 talking and get hold of myself. I must obey you." 
 
 She did not like his voice. It did not sound natural. 
 But she answered him gently, as if nothing were amiss: 
 
 "You are wearing me out, Andrey. Don't you real- 
 ize that all this is very hard on me? Won't you try 
 to control yourself, as I am doing?" 
 
 "I must do what you say, I have no choice," he 
 said dully. "Only do not do not " 
 
 She looked down at him, puzzled. He had buried 
 his face in the pillows. Presently he looked up. There 
 was the humble appeal of a dog in his face. 
 
 "I have always loved Mary so, since I have seen 
 her. I have loved all men. Oh, do not do not " 
 
 He was moaning as if some terrible thing hung 
 over him. She spoke to him sharply, all the more 
 that she felt half-tranced herself by this time. 
 
 "Go now, Andrey. And do as I tell you about 
 going away. I will go myself if you will. When we 
 come back we will both feel better about it all." 
 
 He rose stiffly, obediently, as if she were his supe- 
 rior officer. 
 
 "I am losing control over myself. I must stop 
 talking and get hold of myself. I must . . . obey 
 you." He repeated the words once more monoto- 
 nously. He turned to the little images, and went on 
 talking in a low voice, under his breath. "Grief is 
 her hall, Famine her table, Shrieking is her shelter. 
 
236 THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 
 
 But she is Death and Vengeance is her sister, and 
 for golden gifts they will be kind to the Counselors." 
 
 It was the Edda of Snorro Sturleson. But it was 
 not all as Valla recalled it. 
 
 "Where did you hear that?" she asked him sharply. 
 
 "It is part of an old song, one of the songs of 
 Rurik's people. . . ." He broke off what he was say- 
 ing dazedly, and pushed his hand across his forehead. 
 He walked stiffly out of the room. It did not occur 
 to Valla until later, talking it over, that unconsciously 
 she might have sent him, in his shaken state, into a 
 short hypnotic sleep. 
 
 She spoke of the thing reluctantly. It was always 
 hard for Valla to speak of intimate things to any one, 
 even to kind, absent-minded old Dr. Blanton, who 
 never seemed surprised or shocked at anything but 
 misprints, or persons who laid books down on their 
 faces. And it was doubly hard for her to speak of 
 the Little Queens of Death, with all they meant to her. 
 But it seemed to her that she had to do it if she 
 meant to go on helping poor Andrey. And she knew 
 Doctor Blanton could tell her, if any one could, about 
 the little images. Surely he could show her, if any 
 one could, how to convince Andrey that his dreams 
 about the Little Queens, and her link with them, was 
 a very wild thing. 
 
 She called up the rectory. She wanted to ask Dr. 
 Blanton something about folklore, she said. Mrs. 
 Garrison answered: yes, Uncle Andrew hadn't gone 
 home yet. Surely she could see him: she knew he 
 
THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 237 
 
 would love to see Valla. There was a particularly 
 warm note in Elisabeth Garrison's voice. Everybody 
 wanted to be as good to Valla Harfager just now as 
 they possibly could be. 
 
 Valla winced a little under this knowledge; but after 
 all, it was a small thing beside the greater thing she 
 was going through. She took the little images and 
 drove to the rectory, where Dr. Blanton was waiting 
 in his nephew's library for her. 
 
 "Want a few folklore points from the old man?" he 
 asked amiably as she came in. He peered at her over 
 his glasses. "Arden has a habit of relying on public 
 libraries which I deprecate. And I'm several miles 
 from what really, my dear Miss Valla, isn't a bad col- 
 lection of ethnology. . . . Now if I'd only brought that 
 set of Grimm's Deutsche Mythologik in my trunk . . . 
 one shouldn't be overridden by housekeepers as I re- 
 grettably allow myself to be." 
 
 Valla could not help smiling a little, tense as she 
 was. She set the little images down on the table 
 between them, and told him about poor Andrey Ker- 
 koff' s wild words. 
 
 "If I could prove to him it was all nonsense " she 
 ended. 
 
 But the old clergyman settled his thick glasses more 
 closely, and lifted first one of the little ugly images, 
 then the other. ... He touched the grooved breast 
 lightly. 
 
 "It's true what he says or most of it," he said 
 slowly. 
 
 She stared at him. 
 
238 THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 
 
 "True?" 
 
 "Rurik was as much a Norseman as any of your 
 ancestors. Did you never know that, my dear?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "The rest is interesting; extremely interesting!" 
 went on Dr. Blanton enthusiastically. "The legend 
 of the Valas who were with him, being kept alive all 
 this time by Russian peasants my dear child, I really 
 must write to the Folk-Lore Society about that! and 
 the fresco you speak of on the wall. . . . Certainly I 
 believe it. I believe very strongly in folk-legends, 
 myself. The tales may be warped or misunderstood 
 in transmission, but there is always something ra- 
 tional behind them. Moreover, your images are Helas, 
 most certainly, the death goddess of Norse mythology. 
 See the bodies, one half blue and one half life color? 
 That is an unmistakable proof. Duplication of a god 
 or goddess is common enough." 
 
 "She was Death and her sister was Vengeance. He 
 said that," Valla said in a low voice. 
 
 "The attributes have been made separate god- 
 desses,'' Dr. Blanton explained, his face lighting with 
 scientific interest. "And so Rurik's Valas rode into 
 battle with these death-goddesses on their horses' head- 
 stalls? Of course. . . . They would be a great help 
 in bringing down death and vengeance on one's ene- 
 mies. They would have some of the power, perhaps 
 all the power of the original goddess. . . . You know, 
 my dear," he went on, interested in his subject, "it is 
 really possible that the focusing of thought and be- 
 
THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 239 
 
 lief on visible representations like these might have 
 an actual effect. We are coming back in this genera- 
 tion more and more to the belief in the physical 
 power of mental things. The war broke down many 
 of our inhibitions in that respect. God and the devil 
 have both been closer, since, to the generality of 
 people." 
 
 She interrupted him with what was almost a cry. 
 She had clutched the images again. 
 
 "Oh, so many terrible old Powers have been loosed 
 since then! I am afraid I am afraid! They 
 have always hated the white Christ. And all the 
 fumes of blood have given them strength again." 
 
 She spoke in a half chant, with dilated eyes. 
 
 Dr. Blanton nodded gravely. "Of course. That 
 is, setting aside the spiritual side of it, the basic idea 
 of all sacrifices. Valla, my dear, let me urge you to 
 destroy no no, I cannot ask that but at least give 
 away these images. Some museum would be glad to 
 have them; and I am assured from what I have seen 
 of you and them that you are in danger of having 
 other gods beside the God of the Christians, if you 
 keep them. Give them away. They can give you too 
 much help! 1 
 
 She did not seem to hear him. She was staring 
 wide-eyed at the Little Queens. She rose slowly to 
 her feet, still staring before her. She lifted her arms 
 slowly above her head, her eyes set and her lips apart. 
 She was ghastly white, and quite certainly knew noth- 
 ing of what was going on about her. Her whole being 
 
240 THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 
 
 was concentrated on the images lifted over her 
 head. 
 
 "It was exactly as I have seen other Quakeresses 
 in Meeting, when they were moved by the spirit," Dr. 
 Blanton told her mother afterward, using the Quaker 
 phrase. "That was why I was not more alarmed. It 
 is a well-defined type of ecstasy." 
 
 But her mother was not to be appeased. The girl 
 had not come to for hours. The hypotheses that, 
 being worn out by what she had gone through, the idea 
 that she had unwittingly hypnotized Kerkoff had had a 
 reflex action on her and the other, that it was more 
 or less the same mental state as the well-known 
 Quaker "Moving of the Spirit," did not seem to her 
 to have anything to do with the question. She swept 
 Valla away with her to Canada. Kerkoff left on the 
 same day, she heard afterward, but nevertheless she 
 was glad she had carried off her daughter, even 
 though Valla had come out of her state of trance, or 
 whatever it was, apparently more full of strength and 
 life and vigor than ever. 
 
 Mrs. Harfager would have been glad to keep Valla 
 away till Richard's marriage was an accomplished fact. 
 But it was difficult for her to stay away from home 
 so long, herself, and Valla reassured her. 
 
 "I cannot care about any of it as you think I do," 
 she said. "I have an assurance " she smiled a little 
 as she quoted the old Quaker phrase "that it will be 
 all right for me, finally." 
 
 Indeed, Valla had never seemed so strong, so certain 
 
THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 241 
 
 of herself, so alight with that strange inner glow of 
 power, as she was now. So they returned. If her 
 mother had not known Valla's crystalline truth beyond 
 a doubt, she would have thought her daughter had com- 
 municated in some way with Kerkoff . For he returned, 
 as he had gone, on the same day they did. Not strong 
 and alight, like Valla. He seemed more racked, more 
 shaken and unhappy, than ever. He was as thin and 
 drawn as if he had been starved, or tortured. He had 1 
 the look of a tortured man. But he came to see Valla 
 no more. 
 
 Mary Bellamy did the final outrageous thing when 
 Valla came back. She demanded her for a brides- 
 maid. . . . Outrageous, yet very clever, for if Valla 
 refused she would be no worse off, and if she accepted 
 she publicly forgave, and then who else in the town 
 could visit Mary's and Richard's wrong-doing on 
 them? And Valla accepted. 
 
 The other girls of the town, more her friends, far, 
 than Mary's, talked it over, naturally. It was the 
 sort of wonderful forgiveness that only a woman with 
 Quaker self-control could show. It made them shiver 
 a little, to think of her being such a saint. Only 
 Nancy Whitall shook her head. Her mother had come 
 from up Lancaster way, where the old folk-lore of 
 the Palatinate still holds its children to their far-trav- 
 eled deaths. She made a curious little sign with one 
 ringed, tennis-tanned hand. Another of them looked 
 at her, startled. She was a free-spoken girl, Jennifer 
 Wharton. "Hex?" she said, using the patois word that 
 
242 THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 
 
 the men and women of the back country still shiver at. 
 "Do you mean Mary Bellamy? Nonsense. She simply 
 goes farther to get what she wants than most decent 
 people. That's not hexry" 
 
 Nancy shook her short fluff of dark hair. 
 
 "I don't mean Mary. I was thinking even if I 
 didn't love her I wouldn't hurt Valla Harfager. And 
 I was thinking of two things. One was old Valah 
 Wynne." 
 
 "She wasn't hex, any more than this Valla is. She 
 was religious, too." The other girl knew the story, 
 one of the Colonial tales which are not forgotten in 
 the villages where three hundred years ago seems 
 very close still. Jennifer, too was of the old stock. 
 
 "Whatever she was, preacher in Meeting or not, you 
 know what she did. They whipped her at the cart's 
 tail for being a Quaker, and stripped her, of course, 
 to the waist. She had left her husband and children 
 and gone up through the New England towns to testify. 
 And the head Selectman put his hand on her and 
 said something about her white skin and her fair 
 shape. She was only twenty-six. I suppose she was 
 like this Valla. And she said back to him, very 
 quietly, 'Neither skin nor shape shall trouble thee, 
 thine nor another's, God bids me tell thee, before the 
 coming First-Day.' Then they tied her up and 
 whipped her out of the town. And that Saturday the 
 man's plow-horses went wild while he stood in front 
 of them, and trampled him and the sharp plow- 
 blade went over him afterward." 
 
THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 243 
 
 "What happened then?" asked a girl who did not 
 know the story. 
 
 "Nothing. When they were through whipping her 
 they let her go. She came back home and went on 
 bringing up children and preaching in meeting till 
 she died. She was very strong. Jesse Wynne is her 
 great-great grandson." 
 
 "That story doesn't prove anything," said Jennifer. 
 "The two things happened, or people said they hap- 
 pened. They needn't have been connected." 
 
 Nancy said nothing more. She was remembering the 
 other thing. There had been a child, a little girl named 
 Thelma Robinson, a common little outlander, who had 
 tormented Valla abominably when they were both 
 schoolchildren. . . . No. . . . No, she wouldn't think 
 of poor little vulgar Thelma, nor the way she had died 
 her death in another state, the next month, a ghastly 
 copy of the way she had tormented Valla. ... It 
 didn't prove anything. She loved Valla, as every one 
 else did. And yet. . . . She would not have liked to 
 hurt Valla. 
 
 Valla seemed a person whom it would have been 
 difficult to hurt. She went through her share of the 
 bridesmaids' luncheons and teas always serenely, and 
 with that strange look as if everything was all right 
 somewhere. It did not seem an embarrassment for 
 her to meet Richard. Her way with him, one would 
 have almost said, was pitying, like a mother's for an 
 unhappy child. The situation was visibly hard for 
 him. The others, watching, began to wonder if Mary's 
 
244 THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 
 
 spell, an almost purely physical one, was holding 
 against the constant sight and sound of Valla. What- 
 ever happened, it was too late for him to do any- 
 thing. People were sorry for him. One couldn't help 
 loving Richard, wayward and generous and impulse- 
 swayed boy that he was. 
 
 Mary made the mistake, finally, of attacking him 
 about his very obvious constraint in Valla's presence, 
 a thing she should have expected, one would have 
 thought. She harried and tormented him, he taking 
 it silently, till she went too far, flinging at him con- 
 temptuous words about Valla her lack of human 
 feeling, of human emotion. It was the string she had 
 always played on. This time it, and Richard's fragile 
 poise, broke. 
 
 "Valla is a saint," he cried out to her. "She is too 
 high for either of us to speak of." 
 
 "She never kissed you of her own accord. She 
 never showed you human love. She hasn't any," Mary 
 reiterated. She flung herself against him, with the 
 half -angry, passionate kisses that had always been one 
 of her strongest weapons. She really loved Richard. 
 
 Richard, who had taken Valla's repression for cold- 
 ness, looked at Mary, bewildered. 
 
 "She said she loved me so much that we could 
 never belong to any one but each other," he said reluc- 
 tantly. "She said that when I broke with her. . . . 
 She had never said it before. Mary, Mary!" He 
 clung to her, as men cling unheeding to what loves 
 them, while he poured out his feelings to her. "I see 
 
THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 245 
 
 her at night when I can't sleep. For hours every day 
 I feel her presence all around me. I'm wrapped round 
 by her strength, her power her love. Mary I had 
 to tell you. She knew better than I when she told me, 
 then, that I belonged to her too much ever to be an- 
 other woman's. Mary I'll do whatever you say." 
 
 He was white and shuddering with the effort of con- 
 fession. Mary, more furious than ever, wrenched her- 
 self from him, and struck back with a cheap flippancy. 
 
 "Nothing for you but to go to Utah, if that's the 
 way you feel about it. I suppose I might have known 
 the sort you were if you'd break with one you would 
 with two. No. We'll go on with this marriage. I 
 won't be shamed before all these virtuous country 
 people who sit around judging me all the time with 
 their solemn eyes. We'll get divorced afterwards if 
 it doesn't work." Then she fell to sobbing, in his arms 
 once more. And the spell of her ardent physical close- 
 ness made him half forget again. Only marriage 
 would have made Valla able to give him the unlocked 
 passion Mary could toss lightly to every one. Once 
 freed, she had immeasurably more to give. Mary's 
 kissings and caressings were not real there was less 
 behind. And this was beginning to face Richard. 
 But he was very gentle and loving with Mary after- 
 wards. He had spoiled his life and Valla's. He 
 wouldn't spoil Mary's. And so the girl went about, 
 triumphant once more; till the next day she crossed 
 Valla on the street. Before Valla's steady, illumined 
 smile and courteous words and aura of content some- 
 
246 THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 
 
 how the triumph evaporated. It was only natural 
 self-control and hardness, she tried to tell herself. 
 But somehow the whole thing was beginning to get her 
 nerve. She could not believe that Valla was, as she 
 was, honestly forgiving. She did not believe in high 
 standards, having none, poor child. And she wished 
 Andrey Kerkoff would go away, or come and have it 
 out with her, or something. She'd just been having a 
 good time why did they all take it so hard? . . . She 
 felt tangled in something she did not know what. 
 She was frightened. 
 
 Nevertheless events went on. They included the 
 necessity of housing Valla with Mary, for the wedding 
 was to be at the house of Mary's uncle, a hundred 
 miles from the cousin Mary had lived with in Valla's 
 town. Mary, with her wedding close, drew her arrog- 
 ant airs more firmly about her and showed her posses- 
 sion of Richard perhaps all the more that she knew she 
 did not wholly possess him. Valla's serenity, too, 
 must have irked her badly. A triumph loses much of 
 its excitement if the vanquished does not seem to know 
 his defeat. 
 
 Still, Mary did nothing overt until the night before 
 the wedding day. Half of her eight bridesmaids were 
 from Valla's town, the other half here in her old home. 
 It may have occurred even to her that with the three 
 girls who were visitors a solid phalanx about Valla, and 
 of consequence in the place where she was to spend the 
 rest of her life, she would do well to be courteous. At 
 all events, she was until, blazing with excitement at 
 
THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 247 
 
 the end of the dance just ended, she flashed in her 
 sequinned blue-green dance-frock through the door of 
 the room Valla shared with Nancy Whitall. The two 
 girls were getting ready for bed, Nancy stooping to 
 unstrap the gold ribbons that had laced her slippers to 
 her knees, and Valla weaving her hair into two heavy 
 corn-colored braids for the night. There had been no 
 room for maids. 
 
 "Anybody got a pair of scissors?" Mary demanded. 
 "I've lost" 
 
 She stopped short. Her eye had fallen on the two 
 little images, clumsy, grotesque, and yet somehow not 
 laughable, thick-lipped, sullen-faced, carved in their 
 time-aged worm-eaten wood, with a faint gilt still 
 showing on their chess-queen crowns, and a faint dull 
 blue still making half their little ill-carved bodies more 
 sinister. They stared straight ahead, hands clenched 
 apart behind them over some hidden thing. They 
 were set on the small table by Valla's bed, to be near 
 her, as they had been near her ever since her lover gave 
 them to her. 
 
 "What hideous, adorable little horrors!" she said. 
 "Are they a present I've missed? Oh, I'm crazy over 
 them!" " 
 
 Valla smiled up at her with her steady serenity, 
 going on with the braiding of her yellow hair. 
 
 "No. They are mine. I am fond of them because 
 they are the last gift Richard made me." 
 
 She spoke as if Richard were some one dearly loved, 
 and dead. 
 
248 THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 
 
 "It was ghastly, somehow, hearing her talk straight 
 out, nakedly, like that. Yet it was wonderful, too. It 
 was like hearing one of Shakespeare's women/' Nancy 
 said afterward. Nancy could never make sufficient 
 allowance for the terrific simplicity and frankness of 
 the Friend. Yet there was more to it than that. Per- 
 haps Nancy was right. There was something epic, 
 Shakespearian, in the way Valla fronted her little 
 arrogant rival. It must have shaken Mary, because 
 she essayed insolence in answer, and that was always a 
 sign that she was fretted or angry. 
 
 "I don't see what you want them for when you 
 haven't Richard. I'm crazy over them. Come on, 
 give them to me for a wedding present." 
 
 Valla's steady fingers went on with their weaving as 
 she answered, still serenely. 
 
 "You must have them, if you want them. But do you 
 think you are wise? They may not like another 
 mistress." 
 
 Mary laughed. "I'll risk that. May I, really?" 
 
 Valla made a gesture toward them. She did not 
 touch them. And Mary actually swept them up. She 
 turned at the door, a glittering little figure, waved them 
 at Valla with what seemed to the angry Nancy a ges- 
 ture of triumph, and was gone pattering down the 
 passage, laughing in the childish way which covered 
 so many of her unpardonablenesses. 
 
 Valla sat still on the bed, mechanically braiding her 
 hair. Nancy looked over at her, presently, frightened 
 
THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 249 
 
 at her stillness. The finished plait had slipped from 
 her fingers, and her face was drawn, convulsed. The 
 uncanny air of power and joy and serenity had fallen 
 from her as if it had been only a veil she was wrapped 
 in. Nancy, who had known and loved her always, ran 
 to her and caught her in her arms, and Valla's head 
 fell forward on her friend's shoulder. She began to 
 sob helplessly, heartbrokenly, like any forsaken and 
 insulted girl. She clung to Nancy. "I can't bear it 
 I can't bear it!" she wept. "Oh, Nancy, how have I 
 ever gone through it? Why did I ever say I would 
 come here and be their bridesmaid? He is mine, he's 
 mine, and I must stand there to-morrow and see him 
 married to another woman. I can't I shan't do it. 
 I will go away. I'll go home. Nancy, Nancy, it's 
 killing me it's all I cared for in the world, being Rich- 
 ard's. Nancy " 
 
 She clutched Nancy more convulsively. She was 
 sobbing so that she could not speak. She seemed 
 broken to pieces. Presently she caught at a little more 
 control, and began speaking brokenly again. 
 
 "It's real I don't believe I've let myself think it 
 was true till now I've gone on like somebody in a 
 dream, or drugged I thought it was the grace of God, 
 or pride, or self-control but now I know it's real that 
 he's gone from me it's real! ... It was the taking 
 of the last things he gave me, the last things I had to 
 look and love because his hands had touched them. . . . 
 I gave back all the rings, everything, even the last little 
 
250 THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 
 
 ring he gave me oh, oh, it wasn't worth anything, she 
 wouldn't have cared. . . ." The sobs silenced her 
 again. Nancy could only sit holding her, and feeling 
 the heavy sobs shake her uncontrollably. She wished 
 she could kill Mary and Richard. Valla was so 
 splendid, so perfect, and this little Mary was such a 
 worthless, stupidly brutal little person, and yet it was 
 she who had shattered Valla so that she could only 
 sob here, broken and helpless, stripped of even her 
 pride. 
 
 "I'm sorry, Nancy," she said finally, with the remem- 
 brance of others that was natural to her. "I've kept 
 you awake too long. Go to bed now. I'll be all 
 right." 
 
 Nancy kissed her and went. But for the hour that she 
 lay awake, heartily hating the bride and bridegroom, 
 she could hear Valla's weeping, softly in the bed near 
 her. 
 
 It seemed to Nancy that she had but just gone to 
 sleep, but she had really slept over an hour. She had 
 been dreaming of armies, hordes of strangely clad, 
 flying people, who screamed as they fled before 
 helmeted men and women on great white horses. She 
 was wakened still hearing the echoes of the broken 
 scream. She sat up in the dark, still shaken. There 
 was a rush of frightened feet outside her door. . . . 
 That had been the reason she had dreamed. She 
 sprang up and ran out, scarcely waiting to wrap a 
 kimono around her. There was an unacknowledged 
 terror in her heart as she passed Valla's empty bed. . . . 
 
THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 251 
 
 The scream had not been Valla's voice. . . . She found 
 some of the other girls in the hall. She clutched 
 Jennifer. 
 
 "What was it oh, what was it?" 
 
 Jennifer looked at her strangely as she answered 
 under her breath. 
 
 "Something dreadful has happened in Mary's room. 
 They won't let us in." 
 
 Nancy's heart seemed to turn over in her bosom. 
 She felt as if she had always known what had happened 
 in Mary's room, and at the same time as if she would 
 never know. She ran down the corridor, and pushed 
 her way through the crowding, half -dressed girls and 
 men with hysterical strength, flinging herself against 
 the dreadful shut door and entering, as some one 
 some unimportant person was coming out. 
 
 Mary's little face, white as she had never seen it 
 in life, flung back on her pillow. That was the first 
 thing she saw. Mary's aunt, crying with her head on 
 the counterpane. . . . No, no! People didn't have 
 great red stains over their hearts not except in 
 murder cases in newspapers. Not really, ever. It 
 couldn't be little impudent, arrogant Mary, lying there, 
 irrevocably, solemnly dead. And Valla why was 
 Valla standing so still at the bed's foot, so close to the 
 dead girl? Nancy turned in bewilderment to the only 
 other familiar face. 
 
 "Richard," she whispered, "was it because of the 
 little Queens of Death?" 
 
252 THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 
 
 Richard turned his haggard face to her. "Yes," he 
 said. 
 
 Valla stood on, still and pale, never taking her eyes 
 from Mary. 
 
 And then, when Nancy felt that another turn of the 
 screw would drive her wild, she heard a new voice. 
 
 "It was the Little Queens of Death," said Andrey 
 KerkofPs accented voice shrilly, from where he stood 
 in the shadow, held by two of the men. "I did not 
 want to do it. I had to I had to ! I was sent by the 
 Little Queens of Death, and the mistress they obeyed. 
 They have drunk now, and they will not torment me 
 any more." 
 
 "He was insane," said Richard's shuddering voice. 
 "He came in by the open window . . . and ... we 
 saw him, too late. . . ." 
 
 He could not go on. Nancy's eyes went to the little 
 table by Mary's bedside, following his. The images lay 
 there, tossed down. But across each thick mouth was 
 a fresh stain, as dolls would have if a child had 
 pretended to give them a drink. . . . 
 
 "They are mine," said Valla in a clear expressionless 
 voice. "Richard gave them to me. I should like to 
 have them back." She dropped in a dead faint at the 
 bed's foot. 
 
 She was given them back after the jury was through. 
 Kerkoff was violently insane, and apparently always 
 would be. The alienists said that his delusion of being 
 supernaturally impelled to murder his faithless sweet- 
 
THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 255 
 
 heart was a very usual thing. They gave it a name. 
 Defense reaction, they called it. 
 
 Valla took Richard back, as people had thought she 
 would. His attitude of worship toward her was almost 
 pitiful. He seemed to feel as if he could never atone 
 for what he had done. She was just the same serene, 
 strong Valla she had always been, except that she was 
 more frankly, infinitely loving. 
 
 There were no guests when Dr. Blanton married 
 them. Only Nancy Whitall and Valla's parents. Her 
 mother had insisted, though, on a wedding-gown and 
 veil. After they had been married Valla went upstairs 
 by herself, to change into her traveling dress. They 
 were to drive off somewhere, far, far off. She came 
 down presently, in her dark suit and hat, to where 
 Richard and her people waited. She looked at them 
 for a moment with a puzzled, strained expression, as if 
 there was something she was trying to remember then 
 turned to the right, into her own sitting-room, across 
 from the room where she had been married. Her 
 mother, who had seen her face, caught Nancy's hand 
 sharply for a moment, and almost uttered a cry. But 
 she stood still, by a great effort, beside the men, and in 
 a short time Valla came out again. 
 
 "I give them to you now," she said to Dr. Blanton. 
 
 For a moment she had the old strange look. Then 
 she was flushed and brilliantly smiling again, Valla at 
 her most vital and brilliant. The tension broke, and 
 the two drove off among light-hearted good-bys. 
 
 Valla took the wheel after the first seventy-five miles, 
 
254 THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 
 
 to take her turn at driving. Richard looked adoringly 
 at her bare, beautiful hands, and then spoke idly. 
 
 "Where are all your rings, sweetheart? I thought 
 you said you would put all I gave you on to be married 
 in." 
 
 Valla, surprised, looked down at her hands. "I had 
 them on when I was married. I remember feeling 
 them hurt when you pressed my hand. ... I can't 
 remember. . . . It's strange. . . . Had I better go 
 back?" She looked distressed. She hated these 
 lapses of memory. She had not had one now for a 
 long time. 
 
 "No, dear. They're somewhere in the house you 
 took them off to wash your hands, likely. Your mother 
 will find them they're safe enough." 
 
 Her mother, going with Nancy and Dr. Blanton into 
 Valla's little room after she had gone, paused in the 
 middle of the floor and clutched Nancy's hand again. 
 Neither of them said anything, then or afterwards. 
 Together on the mantel, as they had always been, stood 
 the Little Queens of Death. Wrapped around their 
 feet like a votive offering was the orange-blossom 
 wreath from Valla's hair. And from worm-eaten 
 wooden wrist to clumsy wooden shoulder of each of 
 them, fitting in the grooves some long-dead slave had 
 carved for just such a thing, were strung her lover's 
 rings. On the breast of each of them, in a hollowed 
 old place made for it, a diamond earring made a bosom- 
 jewel. Clumsy, grotesque, yet somehow not laughable. 
 
THE LITTLE QUEENS OF DEATH 255 
 
 with gold chains wrapped into the grooved borders of 
 their stiff wooden skirts, jewel-braceleted, jewel-belted, 
 with faint stains still across the livid blue of the sullen 
 faces under the chess-queen crowns, they looked very 
 content, the Little Queens of Death. 
 
POWERS OF DARKNESS 
 
 As he stepped slowly from the Morgan house Dr. 
 Blanton was repeating something which might have 
 sounded to some one who could not hear the words like 
 a pious invocation. It was not, however. 
 
 "From goblins and ghaisties, and nine-legged beasties, 
 And things which go Boomp in the nicht, 
 Good Lord deliver us!" 
 
 he remarked, pulling the drawstrings of his felt bag 
 close to keep himself from the temptation of reading 
 along the path. He was smiling a little he had been 
 talking to an elderly lady who would have bored him a 
 little if he had not been able to smile at her. Then the 
 smile faded into concern. 
 
 "I hope the poor child is going to be given time to 
 get over it by that impetuous young beau of hers," he 
 muttered. Her aunt's opposition has been just enough 
 to build up a contrariness that is going to "go boomp 
 in the night" straight against Dirk Conkling's ideas. 
 They're all pretty firm, or that's what they call it, the 
 Conklings. Old Archdeacon Conkling and the Athana- 
 sian creed. . . ." He smiled again behind his little gray 
 beard, and fiddled guiltily with the strings of the bag. 
 Then he ran straight into a girl and a man who were 
 
 256 
 
POWERS OF DARKNESS 257 
 
 coming up the path as he went down. ... It was 
 Roderick Conkling and his sister Esther, whom he had 
 thought safe at Dirk's own parish-house, in the middle 
 of a reception of Dirk's people, for their young clergy- 
 man had been kept overseas till the last possible 
 moment, and had just come back to them. 
 
 The Conklings had escaped from the reception as 
 early as they decently could; Dirk had made up his 
 mind to make another effort to see Lucia Morgan. 
 
 As they had shut the door of the parish house and 
 turned to go down the sweet-smelling, wind-blown main 
 street of their little town, Esther Conkling slipped her 
 arm in her brother's and tried to turn him in the 
 opposite direction from the one to their home. 
 
 "Let's go the longest way, Dirk," she said hurriedly 
 and lightly. "It's such a lovely night, and you must 
 want fresh air after three hours of being welcomed 
 home by your loving friends." 
 
 Roderick Conkling stood quite immovable, unheed- 
 ing her tremulous attempt at flippancy. Esther might 
 as well have tried to move an iron figure. 
 
 "Do you suppose I don't see that accursed light of 
 Lucia's every night in the world, whether I pass it or 
 not?" he demanded. "Walking under it doesn't make 
 any difference. I know it's there." 
 
 She gave up with a little sigh of pity, and an "Oh, 
 my dear!" of sisterly affection, and went on in their 
 original road. It was a charming old town with wide, 
 elm-shaded streets. After France it must have seemed 
 to Dirk Conkling as peaceful and lovely as Paradise. 
 
258 POWERS OF DARKNESS 
 
 The church he had just left had been his father's 
 before him; and its people had held its rectorship open 
 to him while he was away in the army. Big, kindly, 
 masculine, fearless, one of the men people take to 
 instinctively, with a hold on the affection and respect of 
 his people such as few clergymen of the present day 
 have, Dirk Conkling hadn't known, ever in his life 
 before, what it was to have an absolutely impassable 
 barrier rise up between him and what he wanted and 
 thought right to have or do. His father before him 
 had been, as he was, half rector, half squire of the little 
 courteous old Southern town. To a good and domin- 
 ant man with charm, money, and a certain amount of 
 power life presents itself as a straight and simple thing. 
 And the light in Lucia Morgan's window represented 
 to Dirk, in spite of his year on the battlefields, the first 
 incomprehensible horror he had ever faced. 
 
 Esther hurried him on, chattering as fast as she 
 could. She tried to make him forget the light; but it 
 was so present in her own mind that it would have 
 echoed in his even if he had not been thinking of it; 
 the light and the picture they knew was back of the 
 light; Lucia Morgan's slender body and rapt, exalted 
 face, bent over something on her knees; opposite her 
 the heavier bulk and coarse, time-scarred face of old 
 Jen Gracey, rapt and avid too. Esther had seen them 
 so the last night she had been admitted to the house, 
 before Lucia and she had quarreled over what Lucia 
 called Esther's flippancy. She turned her head aside 
 
POWERS OF DARKNESS 259 
 
 with a sick and baffled feeling; and felt Dirk's stoni- 
 ness again. He had halted. 
 
 "Whose buggy is that, tied outside?" he asked. 
 
 Esther laughed a little. "There are only two people 
 in a radius of I don't know how many miles who have 
 buggies any more," she said. "It must be either old 
 Mr. Merriman or Doctor Blanton." She came up 
 closer. "It's Dr. Blanton's Horatius," she said, strok- 
 ing the old horse's mild, moth-eaten white face with a 
 friend's hand. 
 
 "Why will she let him in, if she won't me?" said 
 Dirk with a spasm of jealousy. "He's as much a 
 clergyman as I am. And he wouldn't say he believed 
 what he didn't believe, not to get into Heaven itself. 
 I know Uncle Andrew. He may wander around with 
 his nose in the classics and the reins on Horatius 7 
 neck, but once you make him realize what you're talk- 
 ing about " 
 
 "Uncle Andrew's an old man. And perhaps, you 
 know people are harder on you, the more they care for 
 you. Lucia does care for you, Dirk. I believe she'll 
 get over this and be all right." 
 
 "I don't know that I want her, if she can be as insane 
 as this," he said, with the harshness of pain. 
 
 But he opened the gate, and his sister followed. 
 Halfway up the walk they saw the door open, and old 
 Dr. Blanton come out. He wandered down the path 
 absently hunting in his black felt bag for something, 
 and which was no more than they expected did not 
 
260 POWERS OF DARKNESS 
 
 see the Conklings at all. Esther caught his hand as it 
 came out with a small, fat black book in it. 
 
 "I don't insist on your speaking to me, but I think 
 you might to Dirk," she said. "He's been away long 
 enough to be looked at when he comes home." 
 
 "Dirk, my dear boy! You can scarcely imagine 
 what pleasure it gives me here is something I really 
 must show you. It is a black-letter Vescelius that I 
 have borrowed from Mrs. Barry. I suppose I shall 
 return it, but the flesh alas, the flesh is weak. I 
 should very much like to commit petit larceny. An 
 old man like me should be permitted to steal books; 
 say one a fortnight. One a fortnight would not be ex- 
 cessive, do you think?" 
 
 Dirk was in no mood, self -concentrated as he was, 
 for old Uncle Andrew Blanton's mannered and leisurely 
 pleasantries. 
 
 "Uncle Andrew, why does she let you in when she 
 won't let me? She told me no one should enter her 
 house who denied the existence of spirits. She's killing 
 herself with that hellish board, and the old woman who 
 has her hypnotized." 
 
 Dr. Blanton blinked behind his double-lensed 
 spectacles. 
 
 "As a minister of the gospel, Dirk, I have never 
 found anything that prevented me from believing in all 
 the spirits I wanted to," he said. "In my day, you see, 
 we were more apt to be rebuked for believing too little 
 than too much. Fashion's a curious thing. Now in 
 Cotton Mather's day" 
 
POWERS OF DARKNESS 261 
 
 "Uncle Andrew, do you mean that you believe that 
 old woman is doing her good, or that there's anything in 
 it?" 
 
 It was not possible to hurry Dr. B Ian ton. Perhaps 
 he knew that Dirk needed a moment to get hold of 
 himself in; perhaps he was merely talking with his 
 usual oblivious enjoyment of his own conversation. 
 
 "I admit I've been poaching," he said. "Mine's the 
 next parish. But under the circumstances " 
 
 Dirk, scarcely courteous in his impatience, left the 
 old man with a muttered apology and went up the 
 steps. 
 
 "I'm going in. Come with me, Ess," he said shortly. 
 His sister looked up at his strained face, and with a 
 quick hand-clasp for their old friend silently followed 
 him up the walk. As they stood before the door wait- 
 ing to be let in, Esther spoke softly. 
 
 "You know how it was, dear," she said. "Lucia is 
 so gentle, so dependent on people to love her; and there 
 wasn't anybody. Whey they both went at once that 
 way think, with her father and mother dead inside 
 two weeks, and you in France! And her aunt couldn't 
 come on to stay with her for months. She used to 
 walk the floor and say, 'Oh, if I could only speak to 
 mother once! If she could only tell me that I hadn't 
 neglected her in her illness! If I only knew it wasn't 
 my fault! . . .' " 
 
 "That's no excuse, Ess," he said with the harshness 
 she knew meant suffering. "When our mother died we 
 used to ask ourselves that. It's one of the things 
 
262 POWERS OF DARKNESS 
 
 everybody does when they lose people they love. But 
 we didn't try to drag her back from Heaven." 
 
 "We were stronger " Esther began, as the door flew 
 open and they went in. 
 
 "This is Lucia's aunt, Mrs. Barry/' she continued. 
 "This is my brother, Roderick, Mrs. Barry. Lucia 
 and he were going to be married, you know." 
 
 She was a tall, tremulously elegant woman in too- 
 picturesque but expensive clothes, faded and gentle. 
 
 "I know I know," she fluttered. "Oh, Mr. Con- 
 kling, I did all I could If you hadn't written her that 
 they were not real she couldn't bear to think of my 
 poor sister Lucy not being real you know how devoted 
 she was to her mother." 
 
 "I know," he said. "But I haven't seen her yet, 
 Mrs. Barry. Mightn't I go up? She forbade me to 
 see her, and for a week I've kept away. I can't any 
 longer." 
 
 There was a boyish appeal in his voice that would 
 have won a stronger woman than gentle, ineffectual 
 Lilian Barry. 
 
 "I promised," she hesitated, "but I do think she 
 isn't fair to you. Only only please don't be rude to 
 them. They say such things about people that are 
 . . . And I don't think a girl brought up like Lucia 
 ought to associate with Mrs. Gracey, or the horrid 
 people that were her friends before they died. . . ." 
 
 Esther stayed to listen to her random, plaintive talk, 
 but Dirk had hurried up the stairs to Lucia's sitting- 
 room. She followed him with her eyes as she listened, 
 
POWERS OF DARKNESS 263* 
 
 and Mrs. Barry rambled on. "And the house has the 
 most dreadful feel. . . . Lucia says that by and by it 
 will get so it's easier and easier for Them to come. It 
 frightens me so I do believe in atmospheres, you 
 know. I always carry a candle everywhere now." 
 
 As Esther followed her more slowly up the stair, she 
 was conscious indeed that the old house had an 
 atmosphere new to her. It had always had a friendly 
 feel, a feel of contented homelikeness, from the time 
 she and Lucia played hide-and-seek up and down its 
 broad stairs when they were children. That feeling 
 was gone. In its stead was an eeriness and blankness 
 new to her, though it was scarcely two months since she 
 had walked out of it, furious with Lucia. She was not 
 angry with her any more poor little Lucia, seeking 
 across the world's boundaries for the love that had 
 always sheltered her! But she said a little prayer as 
 she went slowly into the room where the others stood. 
 
 It had been the playroom in their childhood. Lucia 
 had taken it for her especial place when she grew older. 
 It had been full of pretty, gay, girlish things dance- 
 programs, woven baskets, batik draperies; traces of the 
 handicrafts Lucia had always been so clever about. 
 They were all swept down now. Books were every- 
 where, all on the one subject. A couple of the titles 
 caught Esther's eye as she stood in the doorway: 
 But I am not Dead! and Revelations from My 
 Child. And Lucia herself, with the wonderful rapt 
 light on her face that Esther remembered, was leaning 
 back in her low chair. Opposite to her, with her hands 
 
264 POWERS OF DARKNESS 
 
 on the little heart-shaped wooden "traveler" still, lying 
 on its lettered board, sat sullenly old Jen Gracey. It 
 was she who was talking, as if she were the mistress of 
 the place, and not pale, ecstatic Lucia. She was a full- 
 bodied woman of perhaps sixty, with thick black hair 
 scarcely streaked with gray, a powerful face, harshly 
 lined, and with vivid black eyes. Power radiated from 
 her, and intensity of feeling. She was poorly dressed, 
 and carelessly, and the broad, strong hand resting on 
 the " traveler' 7 was warped and knotted and black- 
 nailed. 
 
 "If all you can do," she was saying in a deep, harsh 
 voice to Dirk, "is to come here an' slander my blessed 
 boy that you played with when you were little, an' Mis 7 
 Morgan, that always treated you like her own children, 
 you better git out. That's what I say, you better git 
 out. 'Be patient with him!' They says. 'Be patient, 
 he ain't seen the light yit.' But I think it's time They 
 quit bein' patient. Malignin' Mis' Morgan and Myron, 
 sayin' they ain't real I" 
 
 It was Lucia whom Dirk answered, not old Jen 
 Gracey. 
 
 "Oh, Lucia darling 1" he said. "Your mother is in 
 Heaven, happy; too happy to come back and push that 
 silly piece of wood over its board. But I have to tell 
 you what I believe. I believe that there's nothing 
 behind that board but your own mind. And I believe, 
 with your delicate organism, that you're running a fear- 
 ful chance of having the strain snap your nerves; 
 perhaps even do something to your mind. Mrs. Gracey 
 
POWERS OF DARKNESS 265 
 
 is strong enough to stand it. You're not. Lucia, 
 Lucia, give up this child's play and come with me. . . . 
 Lucia! You haven't any right to give me up because 
 I believe one thing and you believe another! If it's 
 love you need, you know you have all mine! 57 
 
 Lucia looked at him, still with the look of angelic 
 happiness on her face. She was thinner than she had 
 been and Dirk remembered with a twist of the knife 
 in his heart what Esther had told him; that Lucia 
 scarcely ate or slept now. 
 
 "Oh, Dirk, I do love you!" she said. "I was angry 
 at Esther because she laughed at Mother when she first 
 came. But Mother says I mustn't be. But how can I 
 marry a man who thinks the most wonderful thing I 
 ever found the most wonderful revelation the world 
 has ever known is untrue? If you could hear what 
 they say. . . . Such beautiful things " 
 
 "Quick! They've come again!" interrupted old 
 Mrs. Gracey passionately. "Put yer hands on, 
 Lushy!" 
 
 Lucia's white hands alighted on the little wooden 
 thing beside Mrs. Gracey's strong old gnarled, dirty 
 ones. 
 
 "Take it down, Esther!" she said breathlessly; and 
 Esther found herself snatching up the pad and pencil 
 that lay ready and putting down letter by letter. Dirk, 
 caught up too in the sudden wave of emotion, stood 
 quiet. 
 
 "M-y b-o-y," the thing spelt, and Esther took down, 
 then more swiftly, "M-u-s-t s-p-e-a-k t-o-" 
 
266 POWERS OF DARKNESS 
 
 "Yes?" Mrs. Gracey interrupted breathlessly. 
 "Who to? Is this Mis' Morgan?" 
 
 The pointer raced to "no" and slid back again. 
 "A-n-n-a-m-e-1-i-c-e-r-t-e-" it spelt, and Esther, putting 
 down what seemed to her a farrago of letters, heard her 
 brother gasp. 
 
 "Stop it!" he said harshly. And she remembered 
 that their mother had never been willing to have any 
 one know what her second name was. Even her child- 
 ren had not known it "a ridiculous name out of a 
 Restoration play" she had told them. It was one of 
 the childish, adorable things that had made them love 
 her more. But her first name had been Anna. . . . 
 Anna Melicerte? 
 
 She went on recording. . . . "I-p-u-t-c-u-f-f-1-i-n-k " 
 
 "That was 'cuff-link!'" she heard old Jen Gracey 
 say in her avid voice. 
 
 ". . . i-n-t-e-a-r-v-a-s-e-d-a-y-I-p-a-s-s-e-d-o-v-e-r," 
 it spelt; Esther checked it off into words; "in tear-vase 
 day before I passed over." She felt an awed thrill. 
 "R-o-d-d-y-h-a-s-m-a-t-e-t-h-i-s-i-s-f-o-r-p-r-o-o-f . . ." 
 
 "Stop it! For Heaven's sake, stop it!" she heard 
 Roderick say passionately. "Make the devilish thing 
 stop!" 
 
 But it went on relentlessly, and Esther kept on 
 taking it down; "H-e-m-u-s-t-b-e-1-i-e-v-e-l-o-v-e-m-u-n- 
 n-i-e " 
 
 The traveler raced down to "good-by" and was dead 
 still. Old Jen Gracey leaned back in her chair as if 
 exhausted, and Lucia too, looked tired. 
 
POWERS OF DARKNESS 267 
 
 "My, that was a strong force! " she said. "Your ma 
 must have spiritual gifts. . . ." 
 
 Esther felt a choking in her throat. . . . "Munnie" 
 that had been Roderick's name for their mother. 
 Roddy, she had always called him. Still it did not 
 prove anything to her. She looked, still shaken, over 
 at her brother. He was white and tense and had half 
 turned away as if to hide his face. 
 
 "Oh, Dirk, wasn't that wonderfully clear?" she heard 
 Lucia's sweet, happy voice say. "They scarcely ever 
 get it as clear as that the first time they come. Dirk, 
 surely you'll believe when your own mother asks you 
 . . . 'Look in the tear-vase . . .' Was there a tear- 
 vase?" 
 
 "You know there was a tear- vase," he said almost 
 accusingly. 
 
 She shook her head smiling. 
 
 "They know everything." 
 
 He had himself in hand by now. 
 
 "Mrs. Gracey used to clean for Mother." 
 
 The old woman started up, furious, but he went on 
 unheeding. 
 
 "Lucia, for God's sake, give this up. If what the 
 thing said proves to be true, it only confirms me in my 
 belief. It is killing you. Give it up, if you ever loved 
 me, or your mother or your father! They wouldn't 
 want" 
 
 The traveler, under the strangely paired hands, began 
 again. "W-e-k-n-o-w-a-n-d-b-l-e-s-s " it said. 
 
 "You see," said Lucia almost gaily, "they know and 
 
268 POWERS OF DARKNESS 
 
 bless! Why, Dirk, it's like having them back with 
 me! Mother tells me what to do about everything, 
 and Mrs. Gracey's son tells her. They're as alive as 
 they ever were. Close 1 " 
 
 "It's all a lie," said Dirk doggedly. To him right 
 and wrong were black and white. And the sight 
 of this thing gripping his Lucia was almost driving him 
 mad. 
 
 But at his unguarded word she flashed up again. 
 She was so thin and transparent that she was almost 
 like pure light, vivified as she was by her radiant 
 happiness. 
 
 "I told you before never to come near me!" she said. 
 "When I saw you to-night I was sorry I'd said it. 
 You must never come again I will never see you again 
 as long as you say such dreadful things of my own 
 people. I know now I was wrong to have you. When 
 you can tell me you believe you can come, not before. 
 My first love and duty belong to Them." 
 
 "If you loved me " he began. 
 
 "I do love you," she said, serene again. "My love 
 may be the means of helping you to the revelation. 
 I'm not frightened about it. They say you will believe 
 soon. They always know." 
 
 "Come, Dirk," whispered Esther. 
 
 He followed his sister out hopelessly. Mrs. Barry 
 was at the bottom of the stairs waiting for them. 
 
 "Could you say anything that would make her give 
 up that dreadful woman?" she asked eagerly. 
 
POWERS OF DARKNESS 269 
 
 "Nothing I can say will have any effect, I'm afraid," 
 he answered her. There are always people like that, 
 whom you must answer courteously at times like that. 
 
 "But what do you really believe?" she pursued. "I 
 suppose as a clergyman you must. ... I took up 
 'Scientific Thought' last winter a course of lessons 
 and they said you mustn't believe in evil at all. ... Of 
 course. . . ." 
 
 He gave her some indecisive answer, he never re- 
 membered what. 
 
 He swept Esther away. They gained their own home 
 with no more said. 
 
 "She watched you out of sight," Esther ventured as 
 they went in. "I saw her face against the pane, just 
 as we left the gate. I think it's just as if that dreadful 
 old woman had bewitched her. . . Dirk, shall you 
 look in the tear-vase? I suppose it would be that little 
 earthen slim thing in Father's old study." 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 "I've seen it before, Ess," he said heavily, turning 
 as they reached the study door, still in their outdoor 
 things. "There was a man in my regiment who used to 
 do it with a planchette. . . . His sweetheart, poor fellow, 
 was killed in a train accident before he left. He had 
 his hands on it every minute he got the chance, writing, 
 writing, writing messages from her, of course. He 
 got so after a while that he didn't sleep or eat; just that 
 same wild, happy look on his face my poor Lucia has. 
 Finally it told him all sorts of things to do. Wicked 
 
270 POWERS OF DARKNESS 
 
 things some of them. His mind went, after six months 
 of it. There's nothing that adequately explains it to 
 my mind." 
 
 "The room seemed thick to-night/' Esther assented, 
 shuddering. "But I can't go that far with you, 
 Dirk. . . ." She crossed the room with a visible effort, 
 and laid her hand on the old Roman tear-vase. "Even 
 if the cuff-link is in this things even if Mother's middle 
 name was Melicerte telepathy might account for it 
 all ... and yet, mightn't there be something else?" 
 
 She lifted the little vase as she spoke and reversed it 
 against her palm. Something tinkled against the 
 earthenware as she shook it. She lifted the vase 
 silently and held out her hand to her brother, with an 
 initialed gold cuff-link lying on the palm. 
 
 He took it. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "I have the other one." 
 
 They looked at each other, dumb and pallid. 
 
 "Come," said Esther briskly at last. "We'd better 
 go to bed. Don't give up, Dirk, old boy. It's just a 
 lady under enchantment. You'll free her all right. 
 Give her time." 
 
 "I must, it seems," he said ruefully. Then, as they 
 parted for the night, "Esther, I'm going to fight this 
 thing in the village if it means my eternal ruination 
 which it doesn't. It's just folly and deception a lying 
 old woman." 
 
 He wrote to Lucia; he telephoned her and tried again 
 to see her. It was of no avail after that. He was not r 
 
POWERS OF DARKNESS 271 
 
 admitted, neither he nor Esther. Twice he crossed old 
 Jen Gracey, malignly triumphant. 
 
 "I'm just a dreadful, common old woman that tells 
 lies," she told him, facing him angrily. "That's what 
 you think. An' I'm the only way Lushy Morgan can 
 git to talk with her folks that's dead that's what she 
 thinks, an' it's true. An' she's the only person I've got 
 in the world to love an' do fer, an' s'long as she wants 
 me to help her I shall, an' guard her from such as you. 
 The Lord's given me this gift, an' it's the first mite o' 
 comfort I've had since Myron was run over by that 
 truck. I've stopped you because I have a message for 
 you. 'Tell Roddy to give up Lushy,' your mother says. 
 'She has another mate on the sperrit plane. She's not 
 for you. You're sunk in darkness. . . .' " 
 
 As she spoke the look of malignity faded, and its 
 place was taken by the look of fierce rapture Dirk had 
 noticed when he first entered Lucia's sitting-room. He 
 began to be almost convinced that the old woman, with 
 her strength and force of passion, and her violent per- 
 sonality, believed in herself and her powers as sincerely 
 as Lucia did. She had power of some sort. She 
 moved him while she spoke. 
 
 He answered her briefly and moved on, raging in- 
 wardly. The old woman, it was clear, had developed 
 a fierce devotion to Lucia; a devotion that was so 
 jealous as to wish to exclude every one else. 
 
 "Her subconscious self apparently does more of the 
 messages than Lucia's does," was his comment to his 
 
272 POWERS OF DARKNESS 
 
 sister when he told her of his encounter. "I'm afraid 
 she's getting a terrible influence over Lucia." 
 
 "It isn't her subconscious self. She's a deliberately 
 bad woman, inventing all this for the sake of a hold on 
 Lucia. But I admit I am beginning to understand why 
 men felt like burning witches. . . ." 
 
 "My poor boy!" said Esther tenderly. "Isn't there 
 any way of rescuing Lucia?" 
 
 "You've tried to see her. I've tried. That poor little 
 fluttering soul of an aunt's tried. She's in a sort of 
 infernal Paradise. . . . Oh, Esther, that horrible 
 woman is gripping her soul 1 " 
 
 "It will pass," said Esther in her loving voice. She 
 was by no means sure that it would, but her brother's 
 happiness was the dearest thing on earth to her, and she 
 would have said or done anything to insure it. 
 
 That Sunday Dirk Conkling preached on the wave 
 of spiritism that was sweeping the country. He used 
 all his powers, all his charm, all his force to drive home 
 to his people the belief he held that the thing was all 
 a lie. He had never preached so well. Small wonder 
 the thing he preached against was stripping him of 
 his happiness, and, he and Esther both feared, threaten- 
 ing the woman he loved with the loss of her mind. His 
 people, whether they listened approvingly or disagree- 
 ing with him, knowing the tragedy that lay back of his 
 sermon, listened tensely, and with little murmurs of 
 sympathy. They were a well-bred folk for the most; 
 there were not many glances cast over to where Lucia 
 sat in her soft black draperies, with the look of 
 
POWERS OF DARKNESS 273 
 
 tremulous rapture on her soft childish face. She had 
 her aunt on one side of her, slimly elegant in her 
 expensive, perfumed satins. On the other side old Jen 
 Gracey's slovenly black Henrietta and shabby old 
 brown coat brushed her close. At one point in the 
 sermon the old woman leaned forward, her lips open; 
 she seemed on the point of getting up and making a 
 scene. Lucia laid a light hand over hers and she sank 
 back again. There was a sort of hushed breath that 
 went through the congregation. They knew that Dirk 
 Conkling was giving up his last chance of marrying 
 Lucia Morgan by this stand of his for conscience' sake. 
 After the service was over Dirk went, according to 
 the custom still kept up in his church, to stand by the 
 door and speak to his people as they went out. Lucia 
 hurried down the aisle, Mrs. Gracey's hand on her 
 arm, casting a wistful glance back at him. She was 
 gone before he could reach her. He felt as if this was 
 all a dream, for the moment; one of those terrible 
 dreams where you reach for the beloved and he or she 
 is always just gone just unattainable. If he could 
 have reached her it seemed to him as if he could have 
 changed her back to the girl she used to be, before this 
 spell was on her. But she was gone; her car was flying 
 down the street with her and Mrs. Gracey in it. He 
 stared after it, forgetting where he was. His people 
 passed him mutely. They were thrilled by the drama 
 of it, but they loved him, too, and even those who did 
 not believe as he believed, those who were, as they 
 believed, reaching their dead through Lucia's road, 
 
274 POWERS OF DARKNESS 
 
 grieved with him, and seeing that silence was best gave 
 it to him as their offering of affection. 
 
 As he stood straining his eyes after the little car, he 
 felt a hand on his arm. He turned and saw that it was 
 Mrs. Barry, whom he had forgotten. In the presence 
 of old Mrs. Gracey's strength of personality one did 
 forget Mrs. Barry. He looked at her in surprise; he 
 had supposed that she would have gone back with her 
 niece. She drew him farther within the empty church 
 vestibule. Her face was drawn with anxiety. 
 
 "You're the only person I knew to come to," she said. 
 ''I'm nearly frantic. I can't stay in Lucia's house any 
 longer, the way Mrs. Gracey treats me; she's a horribly 
 rude old creature. And poor Lucia says, 'But Auntie, 
 what can I do? She's the only person who can help me 
 work the board!' She's begged me not to go, and she 
 tries to keep old Mrs. Gracey in bounds; but I simply 
 can't stand the woman. It's more than I can do, even 
 for Lucia. And I can't make the board go, not the 
 least bit in the world. The ghosts won't come if I'm 
 even in the room. Oh, I forgot they say I shouldn't 
 call them ghosts. . . . It's breaking me down it's 
 killing me! And poor Lucy's child though I'm 
 getting almost so I have a feeling against Lucy, all the 
 things she says to Lucia through the board. ..." 
 
 He looked at her with haggard, weary eyes. "How 
 do you suppose I feel about it, Mrs. Barry?" he said. 
 "There is nothing I can do, except lie to Lucia; and 
 I've put myself beyond the reach of that temptation 
 for it was a temptation deliberately, to-day." 
 
POWERS OF DARKNESS 275 
 
 "You're like me. I've done everything I can/' she 
 said flutteringly, and went on. The words, though she 
 did not mean them to, stung. He did not like to think 
 of himself as being as helpless as poor Mrs. Barry; and 
 yet he was, as far as he could be. 
 
 She came back irresolutely, as if she still hoped for 
 something. 
 
 "Can't you do something?" she asked again. "Oh, I 
 don't know what something! If I were a man I'd do 
 something! Come and see her again, anyway. I do 
 think if your religion is worth anything, it ought to be 
 able to make Lucia's ghosts stop. . . . She doesn't eat. 
 . . . Oh, I'm nearly wild about it!" 
 
 Esther, standing by, shivered a little. She found 
 that she secretly dreaded going back to the place where 
 that strange message had come from nowhere. 
 
 When Mrs. Barry, brightened by the hope Dirk held 
 out to her, had gone her fluttering way, he turned to his 
 sister. 
 
 "She's right, Ess. I've been a coward. . . . Will you 
 go there to-night with me after service?" 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 "But how will you get in? Mrs. Barry, I suppose, is 
 going back to her own house. And you know, Dirk, 
 Lucia's servants " 
 
 "I know. She won't let me in. But I will get in, 
 somehow." 
 
 "They let Uncle Andrew Blanton in," said Esther 
 consideringly. "If you went with him " 
 
 "Yes. And somehow the thought of Uncle Andrew 
 
276 POWERS OF DARKNESS 
 
 is a comfort, rambling as he is." He smiled, drawn 
 though his face was with distress. "I remember once 
 when I borrowed a jackknife and lost it, I went to him 
 I was ten, I think in great distress ; and he told me 
 what to do about it. The queer thing is that I don't 
 remember anything about his advice, except that it was 
 an excellent way through the trouble." 
 
 "If this were only a lost knife!" said his sister. 
 "But at any rate, surely he will let you in." 
 
 "It will be a comfort to have some one to go to about 
 it," said Dirk wearily. "One gets so tired, sometimes, 
 of being grown and responsible. I think I should like, 
 to-night, that feeling of being a small boy again that 
 your elders give you sometimes." 
 
 Dr. Blanton had not returned when they arrived at 
 his little book-cluttered rectory in the next town. 
 They waited a little while on the dark, quiet porch, 
 before he drove up, hung old Horatius' reins around the 
 hitching post, and stepped stiffly down from his buggy, 
 a little black box in his hand. He had evidently been 
 somewhere giving communion to a sick person. He 
 was old, and Sunday is a hard day for an old clergy- 
 man; but when they told him what they wanted he only 
 stopped to put the little communion set away, and the 
 black felt bag which he carried everything in, from 
 books to vestments, and got in with them, Esther be- 
 tween the two men on the wide seat. 
 
 "How did you come to think of asking the old man 
 to let you in, Dirk?" asked Uncle Andrew casually. 
 
 "I had to get in," said Dirk. "I think it was some- 
 
POWERS OF DARKNESS 277 
 
 thing Mrs. Barry said. I keep hearing her say it 
 She said, 'If your religion is worth anything, it ought 
 to be able to make Lucia's ghosts stop.' But oh, 
 Uncle Andrew, isn't there anything to do?" 
 
 Uncle Andrew's voice changed for a moment from its 
 easy, rambling tone, to the one he sometimes used when 
 he preached. 
 
 "Dirk Conkling," he said, "you're a minister of the 
 gospel. And if you can't think of anything that your 
 religion can do to help you in a crisis, I can only advise 
 you to pray till you find out that it can." 
 
 Dirk was silent under the rebuke. Esther found his 
 hand in the soft darkness and held it tight. After a 
 little while, he answered Dr. Blanton. 
 
 "You are right," he said slowly. 
 
 Uncle Andrew slipped back into being his old dis- 
 cursive self after that; even when the two young people 
 followed him up the porch of Lucia's house, he made 
 some little joke about housebreaking. Esther almost 
 wished she had not suggested asking his help. After 
 all, older people had such a gulf fixed between them 
 and you. He did not realize, evidently, the thing's 
 tragic seriousness. . . . And yet he had been visiting 
 Lucia; he must have seen her fading away under the 
 terrible stress of old Jen Gracey's practices. To still 
 have access to the house he must even have admitted 
 something of the reality of it all. 
 
 They stood back in the shadows as the maid opened 
 the door for Dr. Blanton; and followed him in, in face 
 of her look of astonished distress. 
 
278 POWERS OF DARKNESS 
 
 But Dr. Blanton spoke to her in a whisper. "You 
 won't get into trouble for this,- Milly." 
 
 Milly stepped aside and let them go up unannounced. 
 Before they turned to climb the stair old Uncle Andrew 
 put his hand on Dirk's shoulder as if he were an old 
 soldier exhorting a young one before battle. 
 
 "Roderick," the old man said in a voice that, though 
 nearly a whisper, was still as imperative as a shout, 
 "have you been thinking over what Mrs. Barry said, 
 and praying?" 
 
 Roderick faced him, his eyes on his. 
 
 "Yes," he said simply, and no more. But his face 
 was the face of a man going into battle for the thing he 
 holds most dear. 
 
 They gained Lucia's room, stepping quietly. All 
 was as it had been last time; the gracious order, the 
 numbers of books, all on the one topic nearest Lucia's 
 heart, and the seated, tensely-still figures of Lucia and 
 old Jen Gracey with the board between them, beside 
 the window. 
 
 "They're comin' good to-night," Jen Gracey was 
 saying exultantly as they stood unseen in the shadow 
 outside the door. "You're gettin' to have an awful lot 
 of Light, Lushy, almost as much as I have. I wish you 
 et more, though." She glanced up at Lucia, more 
 tenuous and transparent than ever, with an expression 
 of uneasy affection. "I dunno's so much writin's good 
 fer you. I'm tougher it don't hurt me. S'pose we 
 stop at twelve to-night?" 
 
 Lucia laughed a little excited trill of laughter. 
 
POWERS OF DARKNESS 279 
 
 "No! No indeed!" she said. "If They thought it 
 was bad for me They wouldn't come you know that. 
 . . . And I do want to ask mother if she thinks Dirk 
 mightn't be convinced. . . . The only time I'm un- 
 happy is when I think about Dirk. You don't think 
 ever if I prayed for him, and They prayed for him " 
 
 "Don't you think about Dirk Conkling," Jen broke in 
 jealously. "You know what Nonie's always telling 
 you. You have another mate on the sperrit plane." 
 
 A little spark of opposition lit in Lucia's wide eyes. 
 
 "It might have been a spirit pretending to be Nonie" 
 she objected. "You know some of the books say " 
 
 "It wasn't. It was Nonie" Mrs. Gracey affirmed; 
 and then Lucia gave a little cry because the traveler 
 was beginning to move under their hands. 
 
 They were spelling it out absorbedly when Dirk 
 walked straight across the room, and kneeled down by 
 Lucia, putting his arms around her. 
 
 "Lucia," he said. "I've come to ask you once more 
 if you won't give up this thing and marry me." 
 
 She rested a moment in his arms as if they were a 
 haven she had longed for; then she drew herself away. 
 
 "I can't give it up, Dirk," she said wistfully. "It's 
 my religion; and you think it's a lie." 
 
 Dr. Blanton came out of the shadows and spoke 
 suddenly to Dirk, not to Lucia. 
 
 "Roderick," he said, and the easy whimsicality was 
 all out of his voice, "I say to you again what Mrs. 
 Barry said to you. If your religion is worth anything 
 to you it can help you in this crisis. If you believe in 
 
280 POWERS OF DARKNESS 
 
 a living God, He can help you against the powers and 
 principalities of darkness which are not put to flight 
 by denying that they exist." 
 
 He went out of the room. 
 
 Esther, watching, was reminded of the bespelled girls 
 of old ballads, whose lovers had to fight for them 
 against evil elfin things. She wondered suddenly if there 
 had ever been reality in the old tales reality of this 
 sort. Lucia's slender body struggled in Dirk's strong 
 arms like a wild thing. Suddenly Dirk spoke. 
 
 "Lucia, be still and listen to me. I do not believe 
 any of this is a lie any longer. What he said is true. 
 There is a living God and He will help me. There is a 
 reality which holds you, an evil reality. Whether it 
 is a force concentrated around that old woman, or some- 
 thing speaking through her from outside, I do not 
 know. But it wants you for its selfish, cruel pur- 
 poses. Your own mother would never wear your body 
 out, as this thing is wearing it out." 
 
 The old woman darted at him, her gnarled, strong 
 old hands pulling at his arms with a man's strength. 
 
 "You're blasphemin'. Don't listen to him, Lushy!" 
 she screamed. "It's your mother! It's my son, 
 Myron! He's your mate on the sperrit plane he's 
 told me so on the board twice lately. He'll tell you so 
 to-night if you let him! Lushy! " 
 
 Dirk's arms held about Lucia like iron, and the old 
 woman, shaking with anger, set herself desperately to 
 the board again, putting her hands on the traveler. 
 Lucia, from Dirk's embrace, stretched out her own 
 
POWERS OF DARKNESS 281 
 
 hands mechanically and laid them on it too, and Dirk 
 did not stop her. 
 
 The board was moving again. Esther watched it, 
 sick at heart. Dirk did not move from his kneeling 
 position, with his arms around Lucia. His sister could 
 see his face, tense and resolved. She could see, too, the 
 pointer, spelling out letter by letter, flying back and 
 forth like a shuttle. Mechanically she watched it. 
 
 "W-e-d-o-n-t-w-a-n-t-h-i-m," it spelt. "I-n-f-1-u- 
 e-n-c-e-u-n-f-a-v-o-r-a-b-l-e-." 
 
 So far she had watched it when suddenly she took 
 her eyes from it, and fastened them on Dirk. He had 
 begun to pray aloud, clutching Lucia closely. He did 
 not move a finger, yet his sister got a sense of intense 
 force radiating from him a fighting force as much as 
 if he had been using physical strength. Lucia, her 
 hands, beyond his embrace, still lying on the "traveler," 
 lay back lax and white, neither with him nor against 
 him. The "traveler" had stopped. 
 
 "God," he prayed, "Thou art good. This thing is 
 evil. Stop it for me. Give me back my girl. These 
 are the powers of evil. Thou art above them Thou 
 art stronger than they. God, help me 1 " 
 
 He did not pray aloud after that, but Esther could 
 see his lips moving, and feel that he was praying with 
 a prayer that was a warfare; the simple faith that had 
 carried him through his year of physical warfare was 
 bearing him now through what she could feel was a 
 bigger fight a fight of mind against mind, influence 
 against influence. He was fighting the violent old 
 
282 POWERS OF DARKNESS 
 
 woman at the other side of the board for the possession 
 of Lucia Morgan. 
 
 Suddenly the "traveler" began moving again, very 
 faintly. Mrs. Gracey watched it, spelling aloud. 
 
 "Roddy" it began; and she uttered a shrill cry of 
 exultation. 
 
 "Your own mother, witnessin' against you! " she said. 
 
 " is right" it went on. "You are not strong enough, 
 Lucia" 
 
 Esther looked at Roderick. He was as still as be- 
 fore; but the sweat was standing out on his forehead. 
 He looked like a man lifting that last ounce he was 
 capable of. Effort was written all over him. 
 
 "Give it up, marry Roddy" 
 
 "No, no! That's a deceivin' spirit! It ain't sayin' 
 that!" shrieked old Jen Gracey, and Esther pounced 
 on her. 
 
 "You are moving the thing yourself" she accused 
 her. 
 
 "I ain't! I ain't!" she screamed, her face flooding 
 with a dull scarlet of anger. 
 
 "Look, Lucia!" insisted Esther. "Look!" 
 
 Lucia and Roderick, but still moveless, turned their 
 eyes on the board. The old woman was plainly pull- 
 ing the "traveler" away from the direction it wished 
 to go. 
 
 "It says 'Don't marry Roddy.' You missed the 
 'Don't'!" she cried, half beside herself. She had lost 
 all self-control. She was a passionate old creature by 
 nature. And Lucia could see, even Lucia, that she was 
 
POWERS OF DARKNESS 283 
 
 fighting the "traveler" making it write by sheer force 
 of her own hands. Lucia sat up, her face, too, flush- 
 ing. She could feel the pull away from her. 
 
 "Mrs. Gracey!" she panted. "Oh, Mrs. Gracey/" 
 There was tragic reproach in her tone. 
 
 The Gracey woman flung down the board and took 
 one step to Lucia's side, trying frantically to pull Dirk 
 away. 
 
 "Oh, darlin', oh, darlin', I didn't! I never did! It 
 was the first time I was so beside myself I didn't 
 know what I was doin' " she pleaded in what Esther 
 could see was real anguish. "Oh, Lucia, ain't you goin' 
 to believe me?" 
 
 But Lucia clung closer to Dirk. 
 
 "You deceived me " she began to say, and fainted. 
 
 "Don't let me see her! Oh, don't!" Lucia prayed 
 them, lying on her couch, still clinging to Dirk as if 
 he was the only real thing left her in a shattered 
 world. 
 
 "You shan't, dear," her aunt assured her. She 
 looked at Dirk as if he only could keep her safe from 
 the strong power of the old woman; who was down- 
 stairs now, praying and pleading with Esther to let 
 her see Lucia for just one moment, just to give her 
 one more chance to prove that she was honest. 
 
 "You shall never see her again, if I can prevent it," 
 he said. Lucia leaned her fair childish head against 
 
284 POWERS OF DARKNESS 
 
 her lover's arm with a satisfied sigh, and then shud- 
 dered a little as Esther came into the room. 
 
 "It's only I," Esther said. She was very white. 
 She beckoned Dirk over to her and spoke in a low 
 voice. "Dirk, the poor old soul is nearly crazy. I do 
 believe that it's the first time she has cheated. It 
 was a battle, you know your force against hers 
 and when you controlled Lucia so that the 'traveler' 
 moved to speak as you would have had it speak, and 
 Mrs. Gracey found that the spirits, as she believed, 
 had suddenly turned to your side, she was desperate." 
 
 "It was not my force against her force. It was the 
 force of God that I had summoned against the forces 
 of evil," he said sternly. He, too, was pale. 
 
 His sister looked at him strangely. 
 
 "May I tell her that Lucia forgives her?" 
 
 "Tell her that Lucia forgives her. And that she is 
 never to speak to her again." 
 
 He went back and took his sweetheart in his arms 
 again, as if to hold her by bodily protection from the 
 powers of evil that had so nearly swept her from him. 
 As Esther went out she looked back Dirk had sud- 
 denly risen. A little fire burned on the hearth. 
 
 "Put them in, Lucia," he was saying; and Lucia, 
 smiling a little, with her eyes trustfully on her lover's, 
 was laying the board and the little wooden heart on 
 the flame. 
 
 Esther, going downstairs with the message, found 
 old Jen Gracey standing at the door with Uncle An- 
 drew. He was smiling a little, even, and the old 
 
POWERS OF DARKNESS 285 
 
 woman, still shaken, was staring at him as if she was 
 hearing something wonderful and strange. It came 
 to Esther that perhaps the old soul had not had much 
 belief or consideration in her life. And perhaps this 
 passion for lifting her son, who had been everything 
 in the world to her, by her fantastic spirit-betrothal 
 to Lucia, was forgivable after all ... and yet even 
 Esther could not but feel that there had been more 
 in the room than themselves. Had it been merely 
 clash of personality against personality, or ... what? 
 She shivered as she came to them. 
 
 "Yes, I'll come see you to-morrow night," Jen said 
 in a strangely gentle voice. "I I didn't go to hurt 
 her." 
 
 "I know you didn't. You loved her," said Uncle 
 Andrew. "But you might have been letting loose 
 things on her that you couldn't stop, you know. We'll 
 talk about it to-morrow." 
 
 She pulled her shawl close and went out, before 
 Lucia could deliver the message from Dirk. 
 
 Uncle Andrew smiled at her. 
 
 "Things straightened out?" he said. "Well, sup- 
 pose you and I wend our homeward way, like the 
 plowman of whom so little is heard nowadays. They 
 won't want us for some little space of time." 
 
 They went out to the old buggy and its patient 
 horse, and drove homeward. When you were out 
 with Uncle Andrew you could always be sure of hear- 
 ing a great many quotations. To-night he finished 
 most of Gray's Elegy before they reached Dirk's house. 
 
286 POWERS OF DARKNESS 
 
 But just before Esther got out, Uncle Andrew said 
 musingly: 
 
 "God is our refuge and our strength an ever pres- 
 ent help in time of trouble. Queer most people don't 
 do anything about that. You know, Essie, it's really 
 so. ... Think they'll let me marry them?'* 
 
 THE END 
 
THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ 
 
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