"Well, don't forget to give my respects to Miss Emily, and tell her I

say not to worry, but to let the Lord take a turn. You'll find things

pretty topsy-turvy out there, Smith," he added, "but if you don't happen

to have your Bible handy, I'll lend you one and welcome. There's the big

one with gilt clasps the boys gave me last Christmas right on top of my

desk."

"Oh, they're sure to have one around," replied Ordway gravely, as he

shook hands again before leaving the office.

From the top of the hill by the brick church, he caught a glimpse of the

locust trees in Mrs. Twine's little yard, and turning in response to a

remembered force of habit, he followed the board sidewalk to the

whitewashed gate, which hung slightly open. In the street a small boy

was busily flinging pebbles at the driver of a coal wagon, and calling

the child to him, Ordway inquired if Mrs. Twine still lived in that

house.

"Thar ain't no Mrs. Twine," replied the boy, "she's Mrs. Buzzy. She

married my pa, that's why I'm here," he explained with a wink, as the

door behind him flew open, and the lady in question rushed out to

welcome her former lodger. "I hear her now--she's a-comin'. My, an'

she's a tartar, she is!"

"It's the best sight I've laid eyes on sense I saw po', dear Bill on his

deathbed," exclaimed the tartar, with delight. "Come right in, suh, come

right in an' set down an' let me git a look at you. Thar ain't much

cheer in the house now sence I've lost Bill an' his sprightly ways, but

the welcome's warm if the house ain't."

She brought him ceremoniously into her closed parlour, and then at his

request led him out of the stagnant air back into her comfortable,

though untidy, kitchen. "I jest had my hand in the dough, suh, when I

heard yo' voice," she observed apologetically, as she wiped off the

bottom of a chair with her blue gingham apron. "I knew you'd be set back

to find out I didn't stay long a widder."

"I hadn't even heard of Bill's death," he returned, "so it was something

of a surprise to discover that you were no longer Mrs. Twine. Was it

very sudden?"

"Yes, suh, 'twas tremens--delicious tremens--an' they took him off so

quick we didn't even have the crape in the house to tie on the front do'

knob. You could a heard him holler all the way down to the cotton mills.

He al'ays had powerful fine lungs, had Bill, an' if he'd a-waited for

his lungs to take him, he'd be settin' thar right now, as peart as

life."

Her eyes filled with tears, but wiping them hastily away with her apron,

she took up a pan of potatoes and began paring them with a handleless

knife.

"After your former marriages," he remarked doubtful as to whether he

should offer sympathy or congratulations, "I should have thought you

would have rested free for a time at least."

"It warn't my way, Mr. Smith," she responded, with a mournful shake of

her head. "To be sure I had a few peaceful months arter Bill was gone,

but the queer thing is how powerful soon peace can begin to pall on yo'

taste. Why, I hadn't been in mo'nin' for Bill goin' on to four months,

when Silas Trimmer came along an' axed me, an' I said 'yes' as quick as

that, jest out a the habit of it. I took off my mo'nin' an' kep' comp'ny

with him for quite a while, but we had a quarrel over Bill's tombstone,

suh, for, bein' a close-fisted man, he warn't willin' that I should put

up as big a monument as I'd a mind to. Well, I broke off with him on

that account, for when it comes to choosin' between respect to the dead

an' marriage to the livin' Silas Trimmer, I told him 'I reckon it won't

take long for you to find out which way my morals air set.' He got mad

as a hornet and went off, and I put on mo'nin' agin an' wo' it steddy

twil the year was up."

"And at the end of that time, I presume, you were wearied of widowhood

and married Buzzy?"

"It's a queer thing, suh," she observed, as she picked up a fresh potato

and inspected it as attentively as if it had been a new proposal, "it's

a queer thing we ain't never so miserable in this world as when we

ain't got the frazzle of an excuse to be so. Now, arter Bill went from

me, thar was sech a quiet about that it began to git on my nerves, an'

at last it got so that I couldn't sleep at nights because I was no

longer obleeged to keep one ear open to hear if he was comin' upstairs

drunk or sober. Bless yo' heart, thar's not a woman on earth that don't

need some sort of distraction, an Bill was a long sight better at

distractin' you than any circus I've ever seen. Why, I even stopped

goin' to 'em as long as he was livin', for it was a question every

minute as to whether he was goin' to chuck you under the chin or lam you

on the head, an' thar was a mortal lot a sprightliness about it. I

reckon I must have got sort a sp'iled by the excitement, for when 't was

took away, I jest didn't seem to be able to settle down. But thar are

mighty few men with the little ways that Bill had," she reflected sadly.

"Yet your present husband is kind to you, is he not?"

"Oh, he's kind enough, suh," she replied, with unutterable contempt,

"but thar ain't nothin' in marriage that palls so soon as kindness. It's

unexpectedness that keeps you from goin' plum crazy with the sameness of

it, an' thar ain't a bit of unexpectedness about Jake. He does

everything so regular that thar're times when I'd like to bust him open

jest to see how he is wound up inside. Naw, suh, it ain't the blows that

wears a woman out, it's the mortal sameness."

Clearly there was no comfort to be afforded her, and after a few words

of practical advice on the subject of the children's education, he shook

hands with her and started again in the direction of Cedar Hill.

The road with its November colours brought back to him the many hours

when he had tramped over it in cheerfulness or in despair. The dull

brown stretches of broomsedge, rolling like a high sea, the humble

cabins, nestling so close to the ground, the pale clay road winding

under the half-bared trees, from which the bright leaves were fluttering

downward--these things made the breach of the years close as suddenly as

if the divided scenery upon a stage had rolled together. While he walked

alone here it was impossible to believe in the reality of his life in

Botetourt.

As he approached Cedar Hill, the long melancholy avenue appeared to him

as an appropriate shelter for Beverly's gentle ghost. He was surprised

to discover with what tenderness he was able to surround the memory of

that poetic figure since he stood again in the atmosphere which had

helped to cultivate his indefinable charm. In Tappahannock Beverly's

life might still be read in the dry lines of prose, but beneath the

historic influences of Cedar Hill it became, even in Ordway's eyes, a

poem of sentiment.

Beyond the garden, he could see presently, through a gap in the trees,

the silvery blur of life everlasting in the fallow land, which was

steeped in afternoon sunshine. Somewhere from a nearer meadow there

floated a faint call of "Coopee! Coopee! Coopee!" to the turkeys lost in

the sassafras. Then as he reached the house Aunt Mehitable's face looked

down at him from a window in the second story: and in response to her

signs of welcome, he ascended the steps and entered the hall, where he

stopped upon hearing a child's voice through the half open door of the

dining-room.

"May I wear my coral beads even if I am in mourning, Aunt Emily?"

"Not yet, Bella," answered Emily's patient yet energetic tones. "Put

them away awhile and they'll be all the prettier when you take them out

again."

"But can't I mourn for papa and mamma just as well in my beads as I can

without them?"

"That may be, dear, but we must consider what other people will say."

"What have other people got to do with my mourning, Aunt Emily?"

"I don't know, but when you grow up you'll find that they have something

to do with everything that concerns you."

"Well, then, I shan't mourn at all," replied Bella, defiantly. "If you

won't let me mourn in my coral beads, I shan't mourn a single bit

without them."

"There, there, Bella, go on with your lesson," said Emily sternly, "you

are a naughty girl."

At the sound of Ordway's step on the threshold, she rose to her feet,

with a frightened movement, and stood, white and trembling, her hand

pressed to her quivering bosom.

"You!" she cried out sharply, and there was a sound in her voice that

brought him with a rush to her side. But as he reached her she drew

quickly away, and hiding her face in her hands, broke into passionate

weeping.

It was the first time that he had seen her lose her habit of

self-command, and while he watched her, he felt that each of her broken

sobs was wrung from his own heart.

"I was a fool not to prepare you," he said, as he placed a restraining

hand on the awe-struck Bella. "You've had so many shocks I ought to have

known--I ought to have foreseen----"

At his words she looked up instantly, drying her tears on a child's

dress which she was mending. "You came so suddenly that it startled me,

that is all," she answered. "I thought for a minute that something had

happened to you--that you were an apparition instead of a reality. I've

got into the habit of seeing ghosts of late."

"It's a bad habit," he replied, as he pushed Bella from the room and

closed the door after her. "But I'm not a ghost, Emily, only a rough and

common mortal. Baxter wrote me of Beverly's death, so I came thinking

that I might be of some little use. Remember what you promised me in

Botetourt."

As he looked at her now more closely, he saw that the clear brown of her

skin had taken a sallow tinge, as if she were very weary, and that there

were faint violet shadows in the hollows beneath her eyes. These outward

signs of her weakness moved him to a passion deeper and tenderer than

he had ever felt before.

"I have not forgotten," she responded, after a moment in which she had

recovered her usual bright aspect, "but there is really nothing one can

do, it is all so simple. The farm has already been sold for debt, and so

I shall start in the world without burdens, if without wealth."

"And the children? What of them?"

"That is arranged, too, very easily. Blair is fifteen now, and he will

be given a scholarship at college. The girls will go to a friend of

mine, who has a boarding school and has made most reasonable terms."

"And you?" he asked in a voice that expressed something of the longing

he could not keep back. "Is there to be nothing but hard work for you in

the future?"

"I am not afraid of work," she rejoined, smiling, "I am afraid only of

reaching a place where work does not count."

As he made no answer, she talked on brightly, telling him of her plans

for the future, of the progress the children had shown at their lessons,

of the arrangements she had made for Aunt Mehitable and Micah, and of

the innumerable changes which had occurred since he went away. So full

of life, of energy, of hopefulness, were her face and voice that but for

her black dress he would not have suspected that she had stood recently

beside a deathbed. Yet as he listened to her, his heart was torn by the

sharp anguish of parting, and when presently she began to question him

about his life in Botetourt, it was with difficulty that he forced

himself to reply in a steady voice. All other memories of her would give

way, he felt, before the picture of her in her black dress against the

burning logs, with the red firelight playing over her white face and

hands.

An hour later, when he rose to go, he took both of her hands in his, and

bending his head laid his burning forehead against her open palms.

"Emily," he said, "tell me that you understand."

For a moment she gazed down on him in silence. Then, as he raised his

eyes, she kissed him so softly that it seemed as if a spirit had touched

his lips.

"I understand--forever," she answered.

At her words he straightened himself, as though a burden had fallen from

him, and turning slowly away he went out of the house and back in the

direction of Tappahannock.

CHAPTER III

ALICE'S MARRIAGE

It was after ten o'clock when he returned to Botetourt, and he found

upon reaching home that Lydia had already gone to bed, though a bottle

of cough syrup, placed conspicuously upon his bureau, bore mute witness

to the continuance of her solicitude. After so marked a consideration it

seemed to him only decent that he should swallow a portion of the

liquid; and he was in the act of filling the tablespoon she had left,

when a ring at the door caused him to start until the medicine spilled

from his hand. A moment later the ring was repeated more violently, and

as he was aware that the servants had already left the house, he threw

on his coat, and lighting a candle, went hurriedly out into the hall and

down the dark staircase. The sound of a hand beating on the panels of

the door quickened his steps almost into a run, and he was hardly

surprised, when he had withdrawn the bolts, to find Alice's face looking

at him from the darkness outside. She was pale and thin, he saw at the

first glance, and there was an angry look in her eyes, which appeared

unnaturally large in their violent circles.

"I thought you would never open to me, papa," she said fretfully as she

crossed the threshold. "Oh, I am so glad to see you again! Feel how

cold my hands are, I am half frozen."

Taking her into his arms, he kissed her face passionately as it rested

for an instant against his shoulder.

"Are you alone, Alice? Where is your husband?"

Without answering, she raised her head, shivering slightly, and then

turning away, entered the library where a log fire was smouldering to

ashes. As he threw on more wood, she came over to the hearth, and

stretched out her hands to the warmth with a nervous gesture. Then the

flame shot up and he saw that her beauty had gained rather than lost by

the change in her features. She appeared taller, slenderer, more

distinguished, and the vivid black and white of her colouring was

intensified by the perfect simplicity of the light cloth gown and dark

furs she wore.

"Oh, he's at home," she answered, breaking the long silence. "I mean

he's in the house in Henry Street, but we had a quarrel an hour after we

got back, so I put on my hat again and came away. I'm not going

back--not unless he makes it bearable for me to live with him. He's

such--such a brute that it's as much as one can do to put up with it,

and it's been killing me by inches for the last months. I meant to write

you about it, but somehow I couldn't, and yet I knew that I couldn't

write at all without letting you see it. Oh, he's unbearable!" she

exclaimed, with a tremor of disgust. "You will never know--you will

never be able to imagine all that I've been through!"

"But is he unkind to you, Alice? Is he cruel?"

She bared her arm with a superb disdainful gesture, and he saw three

rapidly discolouring bruises on her delicate flesh. The sight filled him

with loathing rather than anger, and he caught her to him almost

fiercely as if he would hold her not only against Geoffrey Heath, but

against herself.

"You shall not go back to him," he said, "I will not permit it!"

"The worst part is," she went on vehemently, as if he had not spoken,

"that it is about money--money--always money. He has millions, his

lawyers told me so, and yet he makes me give an account to him of every

penny that I spend. I married him because I thought I should be rich and

free, but he's been hardly better than a miser since the day of the

wedding. He wants me to dress like a dowdy, for all his wealth, and I

can't buy a ring that he doesn't raise a terrible fuss. I hate him more

and more every day I live, but it makes no difference to him as long as

he has me around to look at whenever he pleases. I have to pay him back

for every dollar that he gives me, and if I keep away from him and get

cross, he holds back my allowance. Oh, it's a dog's life!" she exclaimed

wildly, "and it is killing me!"

"You shan't bear it, Alice. As long as I'm alive you are safe with me."

"For a time I could endure it because of the travelling and the strange

countries," she resumed, ignoring the tenderness in his voice, "but

Geoffrey was so frightfully jealous that if I so much as spoke to a

man, he immediately flew into a rage. He even made me leave the opera

one night in Paris because a Russian Grand Duke in the next box looked

at me so hard."

Throwing herself into a chair, she let her furs slip from her shoulders,

and sat staring moodily into the fire. "I've sworn a hundred times that

I'd leave him," she said, "and yet I've never done it until to-night."

While she talked on feverishly, he untied her veil, which she had tossed

back, and taking off her hat, pressed her gently against the cushions he

had placed in her chair.

"You look so tired, darling, you must rest," he said.

"Rest! You may as well tell me to sleep!" she exclaimed. Then her tone

altered abruptly, and for the first time, she seemed able to penetrate

beyond her own selfish absorption. "Oh, you poor papa, how very old you

look!" she said.

Taking his head in her arms, she pressed it to her bosom and cried

softly for a minute. "It's all my fault--everything is my fault, but I

can't help it. I'm made that way." Then pushing him from her suddenly,

she sprang to her feet and began walking up and down in her restless

excited manner.

"Let me get you a glass of wine, Alice," he said, "you are trembling all

over."

She shook her head. "It isn't that--it isn't that. It's the awful--awful

money. If it wasn't for the money I could go on. Oh, I wish I'd never

spent a single dollar! I wish I'd always gone in rags!"

Again he forced her back into her chair and again, after a minute of

quiet, she rose to her feet and broke into hysterical sobs.

"All that I have is yours, Alice, you know that," he said in the effort

to soothe her, "and, besides, your own property is hardly less than two

hundred thousand."

"But Uncle Richard won't give it to me," she returned angrily. "I wrote

and begged him on my knees and he still refused to let me have a penny

more than my regular income. It's all tied up, he says, in investments,

and that until I am twenty-one it must remain in his hands."

With a frantic movement, she reached for her muff, and drew from it a

handful of crumpled papers, which she held out to him. "Geoffrey found

these to-night and they brought on the quarrel," she said. "Yesterday he

gave me this bracelet and he seems to think I could live on it for a

month!" She stretched out her arm, as she spoke, and showed him a

glittering circle of diamonds immediately below the blue finger marks.

"There's a sable coat still that he doesn't know a thing of," she

finished with a moan.

Bending under the lamp, he glanced hurriedly over the papers she had

given him, and then rose to his feet still holding them in his hand.

"These alone come to twenty thousand dollars, Alice," he said with a

gentle sternness.

"And there are others, too," she cried, making no effort to control her

convulsive sobs. "There are others which I didn't dare even to let him

see."

For a moment he let her weep without seeking to arrest her tears.

"Are you sure this will be a lesson to you?" he asked at last. "Will you

be careful--very careful from this time?"

"Oh, I'll never spend a penny again. I'll stay in Botetourt forever,"

she promised desperately, eager to retrieve the immediate instant by the

pledge of a more or less uncertain future.

"Then we must help you," he said. "Among us all--Uncle Richard, your

mother and I--it will surely be possible."

Pacified at once by his assurance, she sat down again and dried her eyes

in her muff.

"It seems a thousand years since I went away," she observed, glancing

about her for the first time. "Nothing is changed and yet everything

appears to be different."

"And are you different also?" he asked.

"Oh, I'm older and I've seen a great deal more," she responded, with a

laugh which came almost as a shock to him after her recent tears, "but I

still want to go everywhere and have everything just as I used to."

"But I thought you were determined to stay in Botetourt for the future?"

he suggested.

"Well, so I am, I suppose," she returned dismally, "there's nothing else

for me to do, is there?"

"Nothing that I see."

"Then I may as well make up my mind to be miserable forever. It's so

frightfully gloomy in this old house, isn't it? How is mamma?"

"She's just as you left her, neither very well nor very sick."

"So it's exactly what it always was, I suppose, and will drive me to

distraction in a few weeks. Is Dick away?"

"He's at college, and he's doing finely."

"Of course he is--that's why he's such a bore."

"Let Dick alone, Alice, and tell me about yourself. So you went to

Europe immediately after I saw you in Washington?"

"Two days later. I was dreadfully seasick, and Geoffrey was as

disagreeable as he could be, and made all kinds of horrid jokes about

me."

"You went straight to Paris, didn't you?"

"As soon as we landed, but Geoffrey made me come away in three weeks

because he said I spent so much money." Her face clouded again at the

recollection of her embarrassments. "Oh, we had awful scenes, but I

hadn't even a wedding dress, you know, and French dressmakers are so

frightfully expensive. One of them charged me five thousand dollars for

a gown--but he told me that it was really cheap, because he'd sold one

to another American the day before for twelve thousand. I don't know who

her husband is," she added wistfully, "but I wish I were married to

him."

The wildness of her extravagance depressed him even more than her

excessive despair had done; and he wondered if the vagueness of her

ideas of wealth was due to the utter lack in her of the imagination

which foresees results? She had lived since her girlhood in a quiet

Virginia town, her surroundings had been comparatively simple, and she

had never been thrown, until her marriage, amid the corrupting

influences of great wealth, yet, in spite of these things, she had

squandered a fortune as carelessly as a child might have strewed pebbles

upon the beach. Her regret at last had come not through realisation of

her fault, but in the face of the immediate punishment which threatened

her.

"So he got you out of Paris? Well, I'm glad of that," he remarked.

"He was perfectly brutal about it, I wish you could have heard him. Then

we went down into Italy and did nothing for months but look at old

pictures--at least I did, he wouldn't come--and float around in a

gondola until I almost died from the monotony. It was only after I found

a lace shop, where they had the most beautiful things, that he would

take me away, and then he insisted upon going to some little place up in

the Alps because he said he didn't suppose I could possibly pack the

mountains into my trunks. Oh, those dreadful mountains! They were so

glaring I could never go out of doors until the afternoon, and Geoffrey

would go off climbing or shooting and leave me alone in a horrid little

hotel where there was nobody but a one-eyed German army officer, and a

woman missionary who was bracing herself for South Africa. She wore a

knitted jersey all day and a collar which looked as if it would cut her

head off if she ever forgot herself and bent her neck." Her laughter,

the delicious, irresponsible laughter of a child, rippled out: "She

asked me one day if our blacks wore draperies? The ones in South Africa

didn't, and it made it very embarrassing sometimes, she said, to

missionary to them. Oh, you can't imagine what I suffered from her, and

Geoffrey was so horrid about it, and insisted that she was just the sort

of companion that I needed. So one day when he happened to be in the

writing-room where she was, I locked the door on the outside and threw

the key down into the gorge. There wasn't any locksmith nearer than

twenty miles, and when they sent for him he was away. Oh, it was simply

too funny for words! Geoffrey on the inside was trying to break the

heavy lock and the proprietor on the outside was protesting that he

mustn't, and all the time we could hear the missionary begging everybody

please to be patient. She said if it were required of her she was quite

prepared to stay locked up all night, but Geoffrey wasn't, so he swung

himself down by the branches of a tree which grew near the window."

All her old fascination had come back to her with her change of mood,

and he forgot to listen to her words while he watched the merriment

sparkle in her deep blue eyes. It was a part of his destiny that he

should submit to her spell, as, he supposed, even Geoffrey submitted at

times.

He was about to make some vague comment upon her story, when her face

changed abruptly into an affected gravity, and turning his head, he saw

that Lydia had come noiselessly into the room, and was advancing to meet

her daughter with outstretched arms.

"Why, Alice, my child, what a beautiful surprise! When did you come?"

As Alice started forward to her embrace, Ordway noticed that there was

an almost imperceptible tightening of the muscles of her body.

"Only a few minutes ago," she replied, with the characteristic disregard

of time which seemed, in some way, to belong to her inability to

consider figures, "and, oh, I am so glad to be back! You are just as

lovely as ever."

"Well, you are lovelier," said Lydia, kissing her, and adding a moment

afterward, as the result of her quick, woman's glance, "what a charming

gown!"

Alice shrugged her shoulders, with a foreign gesture which she had

picked up. "Oh, you must see some of my others," she replied, "I wish

that my trunks would come, but I forgot they were all sent to the other

house, and I haven't even a nightgown. Will you lend me a nightgown,

mamma? I have some of the loveliest you ever saw which were embroidered

for me by the nuns in a French convent."

"So, you'll spend the night?" said Lydia, "I'm so glad, dear, and I'll

go up and see if your bed has sheets on it."

"Oh, it's not only for the night," returned Alice, defiantly, "I've

come back for good. I've left Geoffrey, haven't I, papa?"

"I hope so, darling," answered Ordway, coming for the first time over to

where they stood.

"Left Geoffrey?" repeated Lydia. "Do you mean you've separated?"

"I mean I'm never going back again--that I detest him--that I'd rather

die--that I'll kill myself before I'll do it."

Lydia received her violence with the usual resigned sweetness that she

presented to an impending crisis.

"But, my dear, my dear, a divorce is a horrible thing!" she wailed.

"Well, it isn't half so horrible as Geoffrey," retorted Alice.

Ordway, who had turned away again as Lydia spoke, came forward at the

girl's angry words, and caught the hand that she had stretched out as if

to push her mother from her.

"Let's be humbly grateful that we've got her back," he said, smiling,

"while we prepare her bed."

CHAPTER IV

THE POWER OF THE BLOOD

When he came out into the hall the next morning, Lydia met him, in her

dressing-gown, on her way from Alice's room.

"How is she?" he asked eagerly. "Did she sleep?"

"No, she was very restless, so I stayed with her. She went home a

quarter of an hour ago."

"Went home? Do you mean she's gone back to that brute?"

A servant's step sounded upon the staircase, and with her unfailing

instinct for propriety, she drew back into his room and lowered her

voice.

"She said that she was too uncomfortable without her clothes and her

maid, but I think she had definitely made up her mind to return to him."

"But when did she change? You heard her say last night that she would

rather kill herself."

"Oh, you know Alice," she responded a little wearily; and for the first

time it occurred to him that the exact knowledge of Alice might belong,

after all, not to himself, but to her.

"You think, then," he asked, "that she meant none of her violent

protestations of last night?"

"I am sure that she meant them while she uttered them--not a minute

afterward. She can't help being dramatic any more than she can help

being beautiful."

"Are you positive that you said nothing to bring about her decision? Did

you influence her in any way?"

"I did nothing more than tell her that she must make her choice once for

all--that she must either go back to Geoffrey Heath and keep up some

kind of appearances, or publicly separate herself from him. I let her

see quite plainly that a state of continual quarrels was impossible and

indecent."

Her point of view was so entirely sensible that he found himself

hopelessly overpowered by its unassailable logic.

"So she has decided to stick to him for better or for worse, then?"

"For the present at all events. She realised fully, I think, how much

she would be obliged to sacrifice by returning home?"

"Sacrifice? Good God, what?" he demanded.

"Oh, well, you see, Geoffrey lives in a fashion that is rather grand for

Botetourt. He travels a great deal, and he makes her gorgeous presents

when he is in a good humour. She seemed to feel that if we could only

settle these bills for her, she would be able to bring about a

satisfactory adjustment. I was surprised to find how quietly she took it

all this morning. She had forgotten entirely, I believe, the scene she

made downstairs last night."

This was his old Alice, he reflected in baffled silence, and apparently

he would never attain to the critical judgment of her. Well, in any

case, he was able to do justice to Lydia's admirable detachment.

"I suppose I may have a talk with Heath anyway?" he said at last.

"She particularly begs you not to, and I feel strongly that she is

right."

"Does she expect me to sit quietly by and see it go on forever? Why,

there were bruises on her arm that he had made with his fingers."

Lydia paled as she always did when one of the brutal facts of life was

thrust on her notice.

"Oh, she doesn't think that will happen again. It appears that she had

lost her temper and tried her best to infuriate him. He is still very

much in love with her at times, and she hopes that by a little diplomacy

she may be able to arrange matters between them."

"Diplomacy with that insufferable cad! Pshaw!"

Lydia sighed, not in exasperation, but with the martyr's forbearance.

"It is really a crisis in Alice's life," she said, "and we must treat it

with seriousness."

"I was never more serious in my life. I'm melancholy. I'm abject."

"Last night she told me that Geoffrey threatened to go West and get a

divorce, and this frightened her."

"But I thought it was the very thing she wanted," he urged in

bewilderment. "Hadn't she left him last night for good and all?"

"She might leave him, but she could not give up his money. It is

impossible, I suppose, for you to realise her complete dependence upon

wealth--the absurdity of her ideas about the value of money. Why, her

income of five thousand which Uncle Richard allows her would not last

her a month."

"I realised a little of this when I glanced over those bills she gave

me."

"Of course we shall pay those ourselves, but what is twenty thousand

dollars to her, when Geoffrey seems to have paid out a hundred thousand

already. He began, I can see, by being very generous, but she confessed

to me this morning that other bills were still to come in which she

would not dare to let him see. I told her that she must try to meet

these out of her income, and that we would reduce our living expenses as

much as possible in order to pay those she gave you."

"I shall ask Uncle Richard to advance this out of my personal property,"

he said.

"But he will not do it. You know how scrupulous he is about all such

matters, and he told me the other day that your father's will had

clearly stated that the money was not to be touched unless he should

deem it for your interest to turn it over to you."

Her command of the business situation amazed him, until he remembered

her long conversations with Richard Ordway, whose interests were

confined within strictly professional limits. His fatal mistake in the

past, he saw now, was that he had approached her, not as a fellow

mortal, but as a divinity; for the farther he receded from the attitude

of worship, the more was he able to appreciate the quality of her

practical virtues. In spite of her poetic exterior, it was in the rosy

glow of romance that she showed now as barest of attractions. The bottle

of cough syrup on his bureau still testified to her ability to

sympathise in all cases where the imagination was not required to lend

its healing insight.

"But surely it is to my interest to save Alice," he said after a pause.

"I think he will feel that it must be done by the family, by us all,"

she answered, "he has always had so keen a sense of honour in little

things."

An hour later, when he broached the subject to Richard in his office, he

found that Lydia was right, as usual, in her prediction; and with a

flash of ironic humour, he pictured her as enthroned above his destiny,

like a fourth fate who spun the unyielding thread of common sense.

"Of course the debt must be paid if it is a condition of Alice's

reconciliation with her husband," said the old man, "but I shall

certainly not sacrifice your securities in order to do it. Such an act

would be directly against the terms of your father's will."

There was no further concession to be had from him, so Daniel turned to

his work, half in disappointment, half in admiration of his uncle's

loyalty to the written word.

When he went home to luncheon Lydia told him that she had seen Alice,

who had appeared seriously disturbed, though she had shown her, with

evident enjoyment, a number of exquisite Paris gowns. "She had a sable

coat, also, in her closet, which could not have cost less, I should

have supposed, than forty thousand dollars--the kind of coat that a

Russian Grand Duchess might have worn--but when I spoke of it, she grew

very much depressed and changed the subject. Did you talk to Uncle

Richard? And was I right?"

"You're always right," he admitted despondently, "but do you think,

then, that I'd better not see Alice to-day?"

"Perhaps it would be wiser to wait until to-morrow. Geoffrey is in a

very difficult humour, she says, more brutally indifferent to her than

he has been since her marriage."

"Isn't that all the more reason she ought to have her family about her?"

"She says not. It's easier to deal with him, she feels, alone--and any

way Uncle Richard will call there this afternoon."

"Oh, Uncle Richard!" he groaned, as he went out.

In the evening there was no news beyond a reassuring visit from Richard

Ordway, who stopped by, for ten minutes, on his way from an interview

with Geoffrey Heath. "To tell the truth I found him less obstinate than

I had expected," he said, "and there's no doubt, I fear, that he has

some show of justice upon his side. He has agreed now to make Alice a

very liberal allowance from the first of April, provided she will

promise to make no more bills, and to live until then within her own

income. He told me that he was obliged to retrench for the next six

months in order to meet his obligations without touching his

investments. It seems that he had bought very largely on margin, and the

shrinkages in stocks has forced him to pay out a great deal of money

recently."

"I knew you would manage it, Uncle, I relied on you absolutely," said

Lydia, sweetly.

"I did only my duty, my child," he responded, as he held out his hand.

The one good result of the anxiety of the last twenty-four hours--the

fact that it had brought Lydia and himself into a kind of human

connection--had departed, Daniel observed, when he sat down to dinner,

separated from her by six yellow candle shades and a bowl of gorgeous

chrysanthemums. After a casual comment upon the soup, and the pleasant

reminder that Dick would be home for Thanksgiving, the old uncomfortable

silence fell between them. She had just remarked that the roast was a

little overdone, and he had agreed with her from sheer politeness, when

a sharp ring at the bell sent the old Negro butler hurrying out into the

hall. An instant later there was a sound of rapid footsteps, and Alice,

wearing a long coat, which slipped from her bare shoulders as she

entered, came rapidly forward and threw herself into Ordway's arms, with

an uncontrollable burst of tears.

"My child, my child, what is it?" he questioned, while Lydia, rising

from the table with a disturbed face, but an unruffled manner, remarked

to the butler that he need not serve the dessert.

"Come into the library, Alice, it is quieter there," she said, putting

her arm about her daughter, with an authoritative pressure.

"O, papa, I will never see him again! You must tell him that. I shall

never see him again," she cried, regardless alike of Lydia's entreaties

and the restraining presence of the butler. "Go to him to-night and tell

him that I will never--never go back."

"I'll tell him, Alice, and I'll do it with a great deal of pleasure," he

answered soothingly, as he led her into the library and closed the door.

"But you must go at once. I want him to know it at once."

"I'll go this very hour--I'll go this very minute, if you honestly mean

it."

"Would it not be better to wait until to-morrow, Alice?" suggested

Lydia. "Then you will have time to quiet down and to see things

rationally."

"I don't want to quiet down," sobbed Alice, angrily, "I want him to know

now--this very instant--that he has gone too far--that I will not stand

it. He told me a minute ago--the beast!--that he'd like to see the man

who would be fool enough to keep me--that if I went he'd find a

handsomer woman within a week!"

"Well, I'll see him, darling," said Ordway. "Sit here with your mother,

and have a good cry and talk things over."

As he spoke he opened the door and went out into the hall, where he got

into his overcoat.

"Remember last night and don't say too much, Daniel," urged Lydia in a

warning whisper, coming after him, "she is quite hysterical now and

does not realise what she is saying."

"Oh, I'll remember," he returned, and a minute later, he closed the

front door behind him.

On his way to the Heath house in Henry Street, he planned

dispassionately his part in the coming interview, and he resolved that

he would state Alice's position with as little show of feeling as it was

possible for him to express. He would tell Heath candidly that, with his

consent, Alice should never return to him, but he would say this in a

perfectly quiet and inoffensive manner. If there was to be a scene, he

concluded calmly, it should be made entirely by Geoffrey. Then, as he

went on, he said to himself, that he had grown tired and old, and that

he lacked now the decision which should carry one triumphantly over a

step like this. Even his anger against Alice's husband had given way to

a dragging weariness, which seemed to hold him back as he ascended the

brown-stone steps and laid his hand on the door bell. When the door was

opened, and he followed the servant through the long hall, ornamented by

marble statues, to the smoking-room at the end, he was conscious again

of that sense of utter incapacity which had been bred in him by his life

in Botetourt.

Geoffrey, after a full dinner, was lounging, with a cigar and a decanter

of brandy, over a wood fire, and as his visitor entered he rose from his

chair with a lazy shake of his whole person.

"I don't believe I've ever met you before, Mr. Ordway," he remarked, as

he held out his hand, "though I've known you by sight for several

years. Won't you sit down?" With a single gesture he motioned to a chair

and indicated the cigars and the brandy on a little table at his right

hand.

At his first glance Ordway had observed that he had been in a rage or

drinking heavily--probably both; and he was seized by a sudden terror at

the thought that Alice had been so lately at the mercy of this large red

and black male animal. Yet, in spite of the disgust with which the man

inspired him, he was forced to admit that as far as a mere physical

specimen went, he had rarely seen his equal. His body was superbly

built, and but for his sullen and brutal expression, his face would have

been remarkable for its masculine beauty.

"No, I won't sit down, thank you," replied Ordway, after a short pause.

"What I have to say can be said better standing, I think."

"Then fire away!" returned Geoffrey, with a coarse laugh. "It's about

Alice, I suppose, and it's most likely some darn rot she's sent you

with."

"It's probably less rot than you imagine. I have taken it upon myself to

forbid her returning to you. Your treatment of her has made it

impossible that she should remain in your house."

"Well, I've treated her a damned sight better than she deserved,"

rejoined Geoffrey, scowling, while his face, inflamed by the brandy he

had drunk, burned to a dull red; "it isn't her fault, I can tell you,

that she hasn't put me into the poorhouse in six months."

"I admit that she has been very extravagant, and so does she."

"Extravagant? So that is what you call it, is it? Well, she spent more

in three weeks in Paris than my father did in his whole lifetime. I paid

out a hundred thousand for her, and even then I could hardly get her

away. But I won't pay the bills any longer, I've told her that. They may

go into court about it and get their money however they can."

"In the future there will be no question of that."

"You think so, do you? Now I'll bet you whatever you please that she's

back here in this house again before the week is up. She knows on which

side her bread is buttered, and she won't stay in that dull old place,

not for all you're worth."

"She shall never return to you with my consent."

"Did she wait for that to marry me?" demanded Geoffrey, laughing

uproariously at his wit, "though I can tell you now, that it makes

precious little difference to me whether she comes or stays."

"She shall never do it," said Ordway, losing his temper. Then as he

uttered the words, he remembered Lydia's warning and added more quietly,

"she shall never do it if I can help it."

"It makes precious little difference to me," repeated Geoffrey, "but

she'll be a blamed fool if she doesn't, and for all her foolishness, she

isn't so big a fool as you think her."

"She has been wrong in her extravagance, as I said before, but she is

very young, and her childishness is no excuse for your brutality."

Rage, or the brandy, or both together, flamed up hotly in Geoffrey's

face.

"I'd like to know what right you have to talk about brutality?" he

sneered.

"I've the right of any man to keep another from ill-treating his

daughter."

"Well, you're a nice one with your history to put on these highfaluting,

righteous airs, aren't you?"

For an instant the unutterable disgust in Ordway's mind was like

physical nausea. What use was it, after all, to bandy speeches, he

questioned, with a mere drunken animal? His revulsion of feeling had

moved him to take a step toward the door, when the sound of the words

Geoffrey uttered caused him to stop abruptly and stand listening.

"Much good you'll do her when she hears about that woman you've been

keeping down at Tappahannock. As if I didn't know that you'd been

running back there again after that Brooke girl----"

The words were choked back in his throat, for before they had passed his

lips Ordway had swung quickly round and struck him full in the mouth.

With the blow it seemed to Daniel that all the violence in his nature

was loosened. A sensation that was like the joy of health, of youth, of

manhood, rushed through his veins, and in the single exalted instant

when he looked down on Geoffrey's prostrate figure, he felt himself to

be not only triumphant, but immortal. All that his years of

self-sacrifice had not done for him was accomplished by that explosive

rush of energy through his arm.

There was blood on his hand and as he glanced down, he saw that

Geoffrey, with a bleeding mouth, was struggling, dazed and half drunk,

to his feet. Ordway looked at him and laughed--the laugh of the boastful

and victorious brute. Then turning quickly, he took up his hat and went

out of the house and down into the street.

The physical exhilaration produced by the muscular effort was still

tingling through his body, and while it lasted he felt younger,

stronger, and possessed of a courage that was almost sublime. When he

reached home and entered the library where Lydia and Alice were sitting

together, there was a boyish lightness and confidence in his step.

"Oh, papa!" cried Alice, standing up, "tell me about it. What did he

do?"

Ordway laughed again, the same laugh with which he had looked down on

Geoffrey lying half stunned at his feet.

"I didn't wait to see," he answered, "but I rather think he got up off

the floor."

"You mean you knocked him down?" asked Lydia, in an astonishment that

left her breathless.

"I cut his mouth, I'm sure," he replied, wiping his hand from which the

blood ran, "and I hope I knocked out one or two of his teeth."

Then the exhilaration faded as quickly as it had come, for as Lydia

looked up at him, while he stood there wiping the blood from his

bruised knuckles, he saw, for the first time since his return to

Botetourt, that there was admiration in her eyes. So it was the brute,

after all, and not the spirit that had triumphed over her.

CHAPTER V

THE HOUSE OF DREAMS

FROM that night there was a new element in Lydia's relation to him, an

increased consideration, almost a deference, as if, for the first time,

he had shown himself capable of commanding her respect. This change,

which would have pleased him, doubtless, twenty years before, had only

the effect now of adding to his depression, for he saw in it a tribute

from his wife not to his higher, but to his lower nature. All his

patient ideals, all his daily self-sacrifice, had not touched her as had

that one instant's violence; and it occurred to him, with a growing

recognition of the hopeless inconsistency of life, that if he had

treated her with less delicacy, less generosity, if he had walked

roughshod over her feminine scruples, instead of yielding to them, she

might have entertained for him by this time quite a wholesome wifely

regard. Then the mere possibility disgusted him, and he saw that to have

compromised with her upon any lower plane would have been always morally

repugnant to him. After all, the dominion of the brute was not what he

was seeking.

On the morning after his scene with Geoffrey, Alice came to him and

begged for the minutest particulars of the quarrel. She wanted to know

how it had begun? If Geoffrey had been really horrible? And if he had

noticed the new bronze dragon she had bought for the hall? Upon his

replying that he had not, she seemed disappointed, he thought, for a

minute.

"It's very fine," she said, "I bought it from what's-his-name, that

famous man in Paris? If I ever have money enough I shall get the match

to it, so there'll be the pair of them." Then seeing his look of

astonishment, she hastened to correct the impression she had made. "Of

course, I mean that I'd like to have done it, if I had been going to

live there."

"It would take more than a bronze dragon, or a pair of them, to make

that house a home, dear," was his only comment.

"But it's very handsome," she remarked after a moment, "everything in it

is so much more costly than the things here." He made no rejoinder, and

she added with vehemence, "but of course, I wouldn't go back, not even

if it were a palace!"

Then a charming merriment seized her, and she clung to him and kissed

him and called him a dozen silly pet names. "No, she won't ever, ever

play in that horrid old house again," she sang gaily between her kisses.

For several days these exuberant spirits lasted, and then he prepared

himself to meet the inevitable reaction. Her looks drooped, she lost her

colour and grew obviously bored, and in the end she complained openly

that there was nothing for her to do in the house, and that she

couldn't go out of doors because she hadn't the proper clothes. To his

reminder that it was she herself who had prevented his sending for her

trunks, she replied that there was plenty of time, and that "besides

nobody could pack them unless she was there to overlook it."

"If anybody is obliged to go back there, for heaven's sake, let me be

the one," he urged desperately at last.

"To knock out more of poor Geoffrey's teeth? Oh, you naughty, naughty,

papa!"--she cried, lifting a reproving finger. The next instant her

laughter bubbled out at the delightful picture of "papa in the midst of

her Paris gowns. I'd be so afraid you'd roll up Geoffrey in my precious

laces," she protested, half seriously.

For a week nothing more was said on the subject, and then she remarked

irritably that her room was cold and she hadn't her quilted silk

dressing-gown. When he asked her to ride with him, she declared that her

old habit was too tight for her and her new one was at the other house.

When he suggested driving instead, she replied that she hadn't her fur

coat and she would certainly freeze without it. At last one bright, cold

day, when he came up to luncheon, Lydia told him, with her strange

calmness, that Alice had gone back to her husband.

"I knew it would come in time," she said, and he bowed again before her

unerring prescience.

"Do you mean to tell me that she's willing to put up with Heath for the

sake of a little extra luxury?" he demanded.

"Oh, that's a part of it. She likes the newness of the house and the air

of costliness about it, but most of all, she feels that she could never

settle down to our monotonous way of living. Geoffrey promised her to

take her to Europe again in the summer and I think she began to grow

restless when it appeared that she might have to give it up."

"But one of us could have taken her to Europe, if that's all she wanted.

You could have gone with her."

"Not in Alice's way, we could never have afforded it. She told me this

when I offered to go with her if she would definitely separate from

Geoffrey."

"Then you didn't want her to go back? You didn't encourage it?"

"I encouraged her to behave with decency--and this isn't decent."

"No, I admit that. It decidedly is not."

"Yet we have no assurance that she won't fly in upon us at dinner

to-night, with all the servants about," she reflected mournfully.

His awful levity broke out as it always did whenever she invoked the

sanctity of convention.

"In that case hadn't we better serve ourselves until she has made up her

mind?" he inquired.

But the submission of the martyr is proof even against caustic wit, and

she looked at him, after a minute, with a smile of infinite patience.

"For myself I can bear anything," she answered, "but I feel that for

her it is shocking to make things so public."

It was shocking. In spite of his flippancy he felt the vulgarity of it

as acutely as she felt it; and he was conscious of something closely

akin to relief, when Richard Ordway dropped in after dinner to tell them

that Alice and Geoffrey had come to a complete reconciliation.

"But will it last?" Lydia questioned, in an uneasy voice.

"We'll hope so at all events," replied the old man, "they appeared

certainly to be very friendly when I came away. Whatever happens it is

surely to Alice's interest that she should be kept out of a public

scandal."

They were still discussing the matter, after Richard had gone, when the

girl herself ran in, bringing Geoffrey, and fairly brilliant with life

and spirits.

"We've decided to forget everything disagreeable," she said, "we're

going to begin over again and be nice and jolly, and if I don't spend

too much money, we are going to Egypt in April."

"If you're happy, then I'm satisfied," returned Ordway, and he held out

his hand to Geoffrey by way of apology.

To do the young man justice, he appeared to cherish no resentment for

the blow, though he still bore a scar on his upper lip. He looked heavy

and handsome, and rather amiable in a dull way, and the one discovery

Daniel made about him was that he entertained a profound admiration for

Richard Ordway. Still, when everybody in Botetourt shared his

sentiment, this was hardly deserving of notice.

As the weeks went on it looked as if peace were really restored, and

even Lydia's face lost its anxious foreboding, when she gazed on the

assembled family at Thanksgiving. Dick had grown into a quiet,

distinguished looking young fellow, more than ever like his Uncle

Richard, and it was touching to watch his devotion to his delicate

mother. At least Lydia possessed one enduring consolation in life,

Ordway reflected, with a rush of gratitude.

In the afternoon Alice drove with him out into the country, along the

pale brown November roads, and he felt, while he sat beside her, with

her hand clasped tightly in his under the fur robe, that she was again

the daughter of his dreams, who had flown to his arms in the terrible

day of his homecoming. She was in one of her rare moods of seriousness,

and when she lifted her eyes to his, it seemed to him that they held a

new softness, a deeper blueness. Something in her face brought back to

him the memory of Emily as she had looked down at him when he knelt

before her; and again he was aware of some subtle link which bound

together in his thoughts the two women whom he loved.

"There's something I've wanted to tell you, papa, first of all," said

Alice, pressing his hand, "I want you to know it before anybody else

because you've always loved me and stood by me from the beginning. Now

shut your eyes while I tell you, and hold fast to my hand. O papa,

there's to be really and truly a baby in the spring, and even if it's a

boy--I hope it will be a girl--you'll promise to love it and be good to

it, won't you?"

"Love your child? Alice, my darling!" he cried, and his voice broke.

She raised her hand to his cheek with a little caressing gesture, which

had always been characteristic of her, and as he opened his eyes upon

her, her beauty shone, he thought, with a light that blinded him.

"I hope it will be a little girl with blue eyes and fair hair like

mamma's," she resumed softly. "It will be better than playing with

dolls, won't it? I always loved dolls, you know. Do you remember the big

wax doll you gave me when I was six years old, and how her voice got out

of order and she used to crow instead of talking? Well, I kept her for

years and years, and even after I was a big girl, and wore long dresses,

and did up my hair, I used to take her out sometimes and put on her

clothes. Only I was ashamed of it and used to lock the door so no one

could see me. But this little girl will be real, you know, and that's

ever so much more fun, isn't it? And you shall help teach her to walk,

and to ride when she's big enough; and I'll dress her in the loveliest

dresses, with French embroidered ruffles, and a little blue bonnet with

bunches of feathers, like one in Paris. Only she can't wear that until

she's five years old, can she?"

"And now you will have something to think of, Alice, you will be bored

no longer?"

"I shall enjoy buying the little things so much, but it's too soon yet

to plan about them. Papa, do you think Geoffrey will fuss about money

when he hears this?"

"I hope not, dear, but you must be careful. The baby won't need to be

extravagant, just at first."

"But she must have pretty clothes, of course, papa. It wouldn't be kind

to the little thing to make her look ugly, would it?"

"Are simple things always ugly?"

"Oh, but they cost just as much if they're fine--and I had beautiful

clothes when I came. Mamma has told me about them."

She ran on breathlessly, radiant with the promise of motherhood,

dwelling in fancy upon the small blond ideal her imagination had

conjured into life.

It was dark when they returned to town, and when Daniel entered his

door, after leaving Alice in Henry Street, he found that the lamps were

already lit in the library. As he passed up the staircase, he glanced

into the room, and saw that Lydia and Dick were sitting together before

the fire, the boy resting his head on her knees, while her fragile hand

played caressingly with his hair. They did not look up at his footsteps,

and his heart was so warm with happiness that even the picture of mother

and son in the firelit room appeared dim beside it.

When he opened his door he found a bright fire in his grate, and

throwing off his coat, he sat down in an easy chair with his eyes on the

glowing coals. The beneficent vision that he had brought home with him

was reflected now in the red heart of the fire, and while he gazed on

it, he told himself that the years of his loneliness, and his inner

impoverishment, were ended forever. The path of age showed to him no

longer as hard and destitute, but as a peaceful road along which he

might travel hopefully with young feet to keep him company. With a

longing, which no excess of the imagination could exhaust, he saw

Alice's child as she had seen it in her maternal rapture--as something

immortally young and fair and innocent. He thought of the moment so long

ago, when they had first placed Alice in his arms, and it seemed to him

that this unborn child was only a renewal of the one he had held that

day--that he would reach out his arms to it with that same half human,

half mystic passion. Even to-day he could almost feel the soft pressure

of her little body, and he hardly knew whether it was the body of Alice

or of her child. Then suddenly it seemed to him that the reality faded

from his consciousness and the dream began, for while he sat there he

heard the patter of the little feet across his floor, and felt the

little hands creep softly over his lips and brow. Oh, the little hands

that would bring healing and love in their touch!

And he understood as he looked forward now into the dreaded future, that

the age to which he was travelling was only an immortal youth.

CHAPTER VI

THE ULTIMATE CHOICE

On Christmas Eve a heavy snowstorm set in, and as there was but little

work in the office that day, he took a long walk into the country before

going home to luncheon. By the time he came back to town the ground was

already covered with snow, which was blown by a high wind into deep

drifts against the houses. Through the thick, whirling flakes the

poplars stood out like white ghosts of trees, each branch outlined in a

delicate tracery, and where the skeletons of last spring's flowers still

clung to the boughs, the tiny cups were crowned with clusters of frozen

blossoms.

As he passed Richard's house, the sight of his aunt's fair head at the

window arrested his steps, and going inside, he found her filling yarn

stockings for twenty poor children, to whose homes she went every

Christmas Eve. The toys and the bright tarleton bags of candy scattered

about the room gave it an air that was almost festive; and for a few

minutes he stayed with her, watching the glow of pleasure in her small,

pale face, while he helped stuff the toes of the yarn stockings with

oranges and nuts. As he stood there, surrounded by the little gifts, he

felt, for the first time since his childhood, the full significance of

Christmas--of its cheer, its mirth and its solemnity.

"I am to have a tree at twelve o'clock to-morrow. Will you come?" she

asked wistfully, and he promised, with a smile, before he left her and

went out again into the storm.

In the street a crowd of boys were snowballing one another, and as he

passed a ball struck him, knocking his hat into a drift. Turning in

pretended fury, he plunged into the thick of the battle, and when he

retreated some minutes afterward, he was powdered from head to foot with

dry, feathery flakes. When he reached home, he discovered, with dismay,

that he left patches of white on the carpet from the door to the upper

landing. After he had entered his room he shook the snow from his

clothes, and then looking at his watch, saw to his surprise, that

luncheon must have been over for at least an hour. In a little while, he

told himself, he would go downstairs and demand something to eat from

the old butler; but the hearth was so bright and warm that after sinking

into his accustomed chair, he found that it was almost impossible to

make the effort to go out. In a moment a delicious drowsiness crept over

him, and he fell presently asleep, while the cigar he had lighted burned

slowly out in his hand.

The sound of the opening and closing door brought him suddenly awake

with a throb of pain. The gray light from the windows, beyond which the

snow fell heavily, was obscured by the figure of Lydia, who seemed to

spring upon him out of some dim mist of sleep. At first he saw only her

pale face and white outstretched hands; then as she came rapidly forward

and dropped on her knees in the firelight, he saw that her face was

convulsed with weeping and her eyes red and swollen. For the first time

in his life, it occurred to him with a curious quickness of perception,

he looked upon the naked soul of the woman, with her last rag of

conventionality stripped from her. In the shock of the surprise, he half

rose to his feet, and then sank back helplessly, putting out his hand as

if he would push her away from him.

"Lydia," he said, "don't keep me waiting. Tell me at once."

She tried to speak, and he heard her voice strangle like a live thing in

her throat.

"Is Alice dead?" he asked quietly, "or is Dick?"

At this she appeared to regain control of herself and he watched the

mask of her impenetrable reserve close over her features. "It is not

that--nobody is dead--it is worse," she answered in a subdued and

lifeless voice.

"Worse?" The word stunned him, and he stared at her blankly, like a

person whose mind has suddenly given way.

"Alice is in my room," she went on, when he had paused, "I left her with

Uncle Richard while I came here to look for you. We did not hear you

come in. I thought you were still out."

Her manner, even more than her words, impressed him only as an evasion

of the thing in her mind, and seizing her hands almost roughly, he drew

her forward until he could look closely into her face.

"For God's sake--speak!" he commanded.

But with his grasp all animation appeared to go out of her, and she fell

across his knees in an immovable weight, while her eyes still gazed up

at him.

"If you can't tell me I must go to Uncle Richard," he added.

As he attempted to rise she put out her hands to restrain him, and in

the midst of his suspense, he was amazed at the strength there was in a

creature so slight and fragile.

"Uncle Richard has just come to tell us," she said in a whisper. "A

lawyer--a detective--somebody. I can't remember who it is--has come down

from New York to see Geoffrey about a check signed in his name, which

was returned to the bank there. At the first glance it was seen to

be--to be not in his writing. When it was sent to him, after the bank

had declined to honour it, he declared it to be a forgery and sent it

back to them at once. It is now in their hands----"

"To whom was it drawn?" he asked so quietly that his voice sounded in

his own ears like the voice of a stranger.

"To Damon & Hanska, furriers in Fifth Avenue, and it was sent in payment

for a sable coat which Alice had bought. They had already begun a suit,

it seems, to recover the money."

As she finished he rose slowly to his feet, and stood staring at the

snow which fell heavily beyond the window. The twisted bough of a

poplar tree just outside was rocking back and forth with a creaking

noise, and presently, as his ears grew accustomed to the silence in the

room, he heard the loud monotonous ticking of the clock on the mantel,

which seemed to grow more distinct with each minute that the hands

travelled. Lydia had slipped from his grasp as he rose, and lay now with

her face buried in the cushions of the chair. It was a terrible thing

for Lydia, he thought suddenly, as he looked down on her.

"And Geoffrey Heath?" he asked, repeating the question in a raised voice

when she did not answer.

"Oh, what can we expect of him? What can we expect?" she demanded, with

a shudder. "Alice is sure that he hates her, that he would seize any

excuse to divorce her, to outrage her publicly. He will do

nothing--nothing--nothing," she said, rising to her feet, "he has

returned the check to the bank, and denied openly all knowledge of it.

After some violent words with Alice in the lawyer's presence, he

declared to them both that he did not care in the least what steps were

taken--that he had washed his hands of her and of the whole affair. She

is half insane with terror of a prosecution, and can hardly speak

coherently. Oh, I wonder why one ever has children?" she exclaimed in

anguish.

With her last words it seemed to him that the barrier which had

separated him from Lydia had crumbled suddenly to ruins between them.

The space which love could not bridge was spanned by pity; and crossing

to where she stood, he put his arms about her, while she bowed her head

on his breast and wept.

"Poor girl! poor girl!" he said softly, and then putting her from him,

he went out of the room and closed the door gently upon her grief.

From across the hall the sound of smothered sobs came to him, and

entering Lydia's room, he saw Alice clinging hysterically to Richard's

arm. As she looked round at his footsteps, her face showed so old and

haggard between the splendid masses of her hair, that he could hardly

believe for a minute that this half distraught creature was really his

daughter. For an instant he was held dumb by the horror of it; then the

silence was broken by the cry with which Alice threw herself into his

arms. Once before she had rushed to his breast with the same word on her

lips, he remembered.

"O papa, you will help me! You must help me!" she cried. "Oh, make them

tell you all so that you may help me!"

"They have told me--your mother has told me, Alice," he answered,

seeking in vain to release himself from the frantic grasp of her arms.

"Then you will make Geoffrey understand," she returned, almost angrily.

"You will make Geoffrey understand that it was not my fault--that I

couldn't help it."

Richard Ordway turned from the window, through which he had been

looking, and taking her fingers, which were closed in a vice-like

pressure about Daniel's arm, pried them forcibly apart.

"Look at me, Alice," he said sternly, "and answer the question that I

asked you. What did you say to Geoffrey when he spoke to you in the

lawyer's presence? Did you deny, then, that you had signed the check?

Don't struggle so, I must hear what you told them."

But she only writhed in his hold, straining her arms and her neck in the

direction of Daniel.

"He was very cruel," she replied at last, "they were both very cruel. I

don't know what I said, I was so frightened. Geoffrey hurt me

terribly--he hurt me terribly," she whimpered like a child, and as she

turned toward Daniel, he saw her bloodless gum, from which her lower lip

had quivered and dropped.

"I must know what you told them, Alice," repeated the old man in an

unmoved tone. "I can do nothing to help you, if you will not speak the

truth." Even when her body struggled in his grasp, no muscle altered in

the stern face he bent above her.

"Let me go," she pleaded passionately, "I want to go to papa! I want

papa!"

At her cry Daniel made a single step forward, and then fell back because

the situation seemed at the moment in the command of Richard. Again he

felt the curious respect, the confidence, with which his uncle inspired

him in critical moments.

"I shall let you go when you have told me the truth," said Richard

calmly.

She grew instantly quiet, and for a minute she appeared to hang a dead

weight on his arm. Then her voice came with the whimpering, childlike

sound.

"I told them that I had never touched it--that I had asked papa for the

money, and he had given it to me," she said.

"I thought so," returned Richard grimly, and he released his hold so

quickly that she fell in a limp heap at his feet.

"I wanted it from her own lips, though Mr. Cummins had already told me,"

he added, as he looked at his nephew.

For a moment Daniel stood there in silence, with his eyes on the

gold-topped bottles on Lydia's dressing table. He had heard Alice's

fall, but he did not stoop to lift her; he had heard Richard's words,

but he did not reply to them. In one instant a violent revulsion--a

furious anger against Alice swept over him, and the next he felt

suddenly, as in his dream, the little hands pass over his brow and lips.

"She is right about it, Uncle Richard," he said, "I gave her the check."

At the words Richard turned quickly away, but with a shriek of joy,

Alice raised herself to her knees, and looked up with shining eyes.

"I told you papa would know! I told you papa would help me!" she cried

triumphantly to the old man.

Without looking at her, Richard turned his glance again to his nephew's

face, and something that was almost a tremor seemed to pass through his

voice.

"Daniel," he asked, "what is the use?"

"She has told you the truth," repeated Daniel steadily, "I gave her the

check."

"You are ready to swear to this?"

"If it is necessary, I am."

Alice had dragged herself slowly forward, still on her knees, but as she

came nearer him, Daniel retreated instinctively step by step until he

had put the table between them.

"It is better for me to go away, I suppose, at once?" he inquired of

Richard.

The gesture with which Richard responded was almost impatient. "If you

are determined--it will be necessary for a time at least," he replied.

"There's no doubt, I hope, that the case will be hushed up, but already

there has been something of a scandal. I have made good the loss to the

bank, but Geoffrey has been very difficult to bring to reason. He wanted

a divorce and he wanted revenge in a vulgar way upon Alice."

"But she is safe now?" asked Daniel, and the coldness in his tone came

as a surprise to him when he spoke.

"Yes, she is safe," returned Richard, "and you, also, I trust. There is

little danger, I think, under the circumstances, of a prosecution. If at

any time," he added, with a shaking voice, "before your return you

should wish the control of your property, I will turn it over to you at

once."

"Thank you," said Daniel quietly, and then with an embarrassed movement,

he held out his hand. "I shall go, I think, on the four o'clock train,"

he continued, "is that what you would advise?"

"It is better, I feel, to go immediately. I have an appointment with the

lawyer for the bank at a quarter of five." He put out his hand again for

his nephew's. "Daniel, you are a good man," he added, as he turned away.

Not until a moment later, when he was in the hall, did Ordway remember

that he had left Alice crouched on the floor, and coming back he lifted

her into his arms. "It is all right, Alice, don't cry," he said, as he

kissed her. Then turning from her, with a strange dullness of sensation,

he crossed the hall and entered his room, where he found Lydia still

lying with her face hidden in the cushions of the chair.

At his step she looked up and put out her hand, with an imploring

gesture.

"Daniel!" she called softly, "Daniel!"

Before replying to her he went to his bureau and hurriedly packed some

clothes into a bag. Then, with the satchel still in his hand, he came

over and stopped beside her.

"I can't wait to explain, Lydia; Uncle Richard will tell you," he said.

"You are going away? Do you mean you are going away?" she questioned.

"To-morrow you will understand," he answered, "that it is better so."

For a moment uncertainty clouded her face; then she raised herself and

leaned toward him.

"But Alice? Does Alice go with you?" she asked.

"No, Alice is safe. Go to her."

"You will come back again? It is not forever?"

He shook his head smiling. "Perhaps," he answered.

She still gazed steadily up at him, and he saw presently a look come

into her face like the look with which she had heard of the blow he had

struck Geoffrey Heath.

"Daniel, you are a brave man," she said, and sobbed as she kissed him.

Following him to the threshold, she listened, with her face pressed

against the lintel, while she heard him go down the staircase and close

the front door softly behind him.

CHAPTER VII

FLIGHT

NOT until the train had started and the conductor had asked for his

ticket, did Ordway realize that he was on his way to Tappahannock. At

the discovery he was conscious of no surprise--scarcely of any

interest--it seemed to matter to him so little in which direction he

went. A curious numbness of sensation had paralysed both his memory and

his perceptions, and he hardly knew whether he was glad or sorry, warm

or cold. In the same way he wondered why he felt no regret at leaving

Botetourt forever--no clinging tenderness for his home, for Lydia, for

Alice. If his children had been strangers to him he could not have

thought of his parting from them with a greater absence of feeling. Was

it possible at last that he was to be delivered from the emotional

intensity, the power of vicarious suffering, which had made him one of

the world's failures? He recalled indifferently Alice's convulsed

features, and the pathetic quiver of her lip, which had drooped like a

child's that is hurt. These things left him utterly unmoved when he

remembered them, and he even found himself asking the next instant, with

a vague curiosity, if the bald-headed man in the seat in front of him

was going home to spend Christmas with his daughter? "But what has this

bald-headed man to do with Alice or with me?" he demanded in perplexity,

"and why is it that I can think of him now with the same interest with

which I think of my own child? I am going away forever and I shall never

see them again," he continued, with emphasis, as if to convince himself

of some fact which he had but half understood. "Yes, I shall never see

them again, and Alice will be quite happy without me, and Alice's child

will grow up probably without hearing my name. Yet I did it for Alice.

No, I did not do it for Alice, or for Alice's child," he corrected

quickly, with a piercing flash of insight. "It was for something larger,

stronger--something as inevitable as the law. I could not help it, it

was for myself," he added, after a minute. And it seemed to him that

with this inward revelation the outer covering of things was stripped

suddenly from before his eyes. As beneath his sacrifice he recognised

the inexorable law, so beneath Alice's beauty he beheld the skeleton

which her radiant flesh clothed with life, and beneath Lydia's mask of

conventionality her little naked soul, too delicate and shivering to

stand alone. It was as if all pretence, all deceit, all illusions, had

shrivelled now in the hard dry, atmosphere through which he looked.

"Yes, I am indifferent to them all and to everything," he concluded;

"Lydia, and Dick and even Alice are no closer to me than is the

bald-headed man on the front seat. Nobody is closer to another when it

comes to that, for each one of us is alone in an illimitable space."

The swinging lights of the train were reflected in the falling snow

outside, like orbed blue flames against a curtain of white. Through the

crack under the window a little cold draught entered, blowing the

cinders from the sill into his face. It was the common day coach of a

local train, and the passengers were, for the most part, young men or

young women clerks, who were hastening back to their country homes for

Christmas. Once when they reached a station several girls got off, with

their arms filled with packages, and pushed their way through the heavy

drifts to a sleigh waiting under the dim oil lamp outside. For a minute

he followed them idly in his imagination, seeing the merry party

ploughing over the old country roads to the warm farm house, where a

bright log fire and a Christmas tree were prepared for them. The window

panes were frosted over now, and when the train started on its slow

journey he could see only the orbed blue flames dancing in the night

against the whirling snowflakes.

It was nine o'clock when they pulled into Tappahannock and when he came

out upon the platform he found that the storm had ceased, though the

ground lay white and hard beneath the scattered street lamps. Straight

ahead of him, as he walked up the long hill from the station, he heard

the ring of other footsteps on the frozen snow. The lights were still

burning in the little shops, and through the uncurtained windows he

could see the variegated display of Christmas decorations. Here and

there a woman, with her head wrapped in a shawl, was peering eagerly at

a collection of toys or a wreath of evergreens, but, for the rest, the

shops appeared singularly empty even for so late an hour on Christmas

Eve. In the absorption of his thoughts, he scarcely noticed this, and he

was conscious of no particular surprise when, as he reached the familiar

warehouse, he saw Baxter's enormous figure loom darkly under the

flickering light above the sidewalk. Behind him the vacant building

yawned like a sepulchral cavern, the dim archway hung with a glistening

fringe of icicles.

"Is that you, Baxter?" he asked, and stretched out his hand with a

mechanical movement.

"Why, bless my soul, Smith!" exclaimed Baxter, "who'd ever have believed

it!"

"I've just got off the train," returned Ordway, feeling vaguely that

some explanation of his presence was needed, "and I'm trying to find a

place where I can keep warm until I take the one for the West at

midnight. It didn't occur to me that you would be in your office. I was

going to Mrs. Buzzy's."

"You'd better come along with me, for I don't believe you'll find a

living soul at Mag Buzzy's--not even a kid," replied Baxter, "her

husband is one of Jasper Trend's overseers, you know, and they're most

likely down at the cotton mills."

"At the cotton mills? Why, what's the matter there?"

"You haven't heard then? I thought it was in all the papers. There's

been a big strike on for a week--Jasper lowered wages the first of the

month--and every operative has turned out and demanded more pay and

shorter hours. The old man's hoppin', of course, and the funny part is,

Smith, that he lays every bit of the trouble at your door. He says that

you started it all by raisin' the ideas of the operatives."

"But it's a pretty serious business for them, Baxter. How are they going

to live through this weather?"

"They ain't livin', they're starvin', though I believe the union is

comin' to their help sooner or later. But what's that in such a

blood-curdlin' spell as this?"

A sudden noise, like that of a great shout, rising and falling in the

bitter air, came to them from below the slope of the hill, and catching

Ordway's arm, Baxter drew him closer under the street lamp.

"They're hootin' at the guards Trend has put around the mills," he said,

while his words floated like vapour out of his mouth into the cold,

"he's got policemen stalkin' up an' down before his house, too."

"You mean he actually fears violence?"

"Oh, well, when trouble is once started, you know, it is apt to go at a

gallop. A policeman got his skull knocked in yesterday, and one of the

strikers had his leg broken this afternoon. Somebody has been stonin'

Jasper's windows in the back, but they can't tell whether it's a striker

or a scamp of a boy. The truth is, Smith," he added, "that Jasper ought

to have sold the mills when he had an offer of a hundred thousand six

months ago. But he wouldn't do it because he said he made more than the

interest on that five times over. I reckon he's sorry enough now he

didn't catch at it."

For a moment Ordway looked in silence under the hanging icicles into the

cavernous mouth of the warehouse, while he listened to the smothered

sounds, like the angry growls of a great beast, which came toward them

from the foot of the hill.

Into the confusion of his thoughts there broke suddenly the meaning of

Richard Ordway's parting words.

"Baxter," he said quietly, "I'll give Jasper Trend a hundred thousand

dollars for his mills to-night."

Baxter let go the lamp post against which he was leaning, and fell back

a step, rubbing his stiffened hands on his big shaggy overcoat.

"You, Smith? Why, what in thunder do you want with 'em? It's my belief

that they will be afire before midnight. Do you hear that noise? Well,

there ain't men enough in Tappahannock to put those mills out when they

are once caught."

Ordway turned his face from the warehouse to his companion, and it

seemed to Baxter that his eyes shone like blue lights out of the

darkness.

"But they won't burn after they're mine, Baxter," he answered. "I'll buy

the mills and I'll settle this strike before I leave Tappahannock at

midnight."

"You mean you'll go away even after you've bought 'em?"

"I mean I've got to go--to go always from place to place--but I'll leave

you here in my stead." He laughed shortly, but there was no merriment in

the sound. "I'll run the mills on the cooperative plan, Baxter, and I'll

leave you in charge of them--you and Banks." Then he caught Baxter's arm

with both hands, and turned his body forcibly in the direction of the

church at the top of the hill. "While we are talking those people down

there are freezing," he said.

"An' so am I, if you don't mind my mentionin' it," observed Baxter

meekly.

"Then let's go to Trend's. There's not a minute to lose, if we are to

save the mills. Are you coming, Baxter?"

"Oh, I'm comin'," replied Baxter, waddling in his shaggy coat like a

great black bear, "but I'd like to git up my wind first," he added,

puffing clouds of steam as he ascended the hill.

"There's no time for that," returned Ordway, sharply, as he dragged him

along.

When they reached Jasper Trend's gate, a policeman, who strolled,

beating his hands together, on the board walk, came up and stopped them

as they were about to enter. Then recognising Baxter, he apologised and

moved on. A moment later the sound of their footsteps on the porch

brought the head of Banks to the crack of the door.

"Who are you? and what is your business?" he demanded.

"Banks!" said Ordway in a whisper, and at his voice the bar, which

Banks had slipped from the door, fell with a loud crash from his hands.

"Good Lord, it's really you, Smith!" he cried in a delirium of joy.

"Harry, be careful or you'll wake the baby," called a voice softly from

the top of the staircase.

"Darn the baby!" growled Banks, lowering his tone obediently. "The next

thing she'll be asking me to put out the mills because the light wakes

the baby. When did you come, Smith? And what on God's earth are you

doing here?"

"I came to stop the strike," responded Ordway, smiling. "I've brought an

offer to Mr. Trend, I must speak to him at once."

"He's in the dining-room, but if you've come from the strikers it's no

use. His back's up."

"Well, it ain't from the strikers," interrupted Baxter, pushing his way

in the direction of the dining-room. "It's from a chap we won't name,

but he wants to buy the mills, not to settle the strike with Jasper."

"Then he's a darn fool," remarked Jasper Trend from the threshold, "for

if I don't get the ringleaders arrested befo' mornin' thar won't be a

brick left standin' in the buildings."

"The chap I mean ain't worryin' about that," said Baxter, "provided

you'll sign the agreement in the next ten minutes. He's ready to give

you a hundred thousand for the mills, strikers an' all."

"Sign the agreement? I ain't got any agreement," protested Jasper,

suspecting a trap, "and how do I know that the strike ain't over befo'

you're making the offer?"

"Well, if you'll just step over to the window, and stick your head out,

you won't have much uncertainty about that, I reckon," returned Baxter.

Crossing to the window, Ordway threw it open, waiting with his hand on

the sash, while the threatening shouts from below the hill floated into

the room.

"Papa, the baby can't sleep for the noise those men make down at the

mills," called a peremptory voice from the landing above.

"I told you so!" groaned Banks, closing the window.

"I ain't got any agreement," repeated Jasper, in helpless irritation, as

he sank back into his chair.

"Oh, I reckon Smith can draw up one for you as well as a lawyer," said

Baxter, while Ordway, sitting down at a little fancy desk of Milly's in

one corner, wrote out the agreement of sale on a sheet of scented note

paper.

When he held the pen out to Jasper, the old man looked up at him with

blinking eyes. "Is it to hold good if the damned thing burns befo'

mornin'?" he asked.

"If it burns before morning--yes."

With a sigh of relief Jasper wrote his name. "How do I know if I'm to

get the money?" he inquired the next instant, moved by a new suspicion.

"I shall telegraph instructions to a lawyer in Botetourt," replied

Ordway, as he handed the pen to Baxter, "and you will receive an answer

by twelve o'clock to-morrow. I want your signature, also, Banks," he

continued, turning to the young man. "I've made two copies, you see, one

of which I shall leave with Baxter."

"Then you're going away?" inquired Banks, gloomily.

Ordway nodded. "I am leaving on the midnight train," he answered.

"So you're going West?"

"Yes, I'm going West, and I've barely time to settle things at the mills

before I start. God bless you, Banks. Good-bye."

Without waiting for Baxter, who was struggling into his overcoat in the

hall, he broke away from the detaining hold of Banks, and opening the

door, ran down the frozen walk, and out into the street, where the

policeman called a "Merry Christmas!" to him as he hurried by.

When he gained the top of the hill, and descended rapidly toward the

broad level beyond, where the brick buildings of the cotton mills stood

in the centre of a waste of snow, the shouts grew louder and more

frequent, and the black mass on the frozen ground divided itself

presently into individual atoms. A few bonfires had started on the

outskirts of the crowd, and by their fitful light, which fell in jagged,

reddish shadows on the snow, he could see the hard faces of the men, the

sharpened ones of the women, and the pinched ones of little children,

all sallow from close work in unhealthy atmospheres and wan from lack

of nourishing and wholesome food. As he approached one of these fires,

made from a burning barrel, a young woman, with a thin, blue face, and a

baby wrapped in a ragged shawl on her breast, turned and spat fiercely

in his direction. "This ain't no place for swells!" she screamed, and

began laughing shrilly in a half-crazed voice.

In the excitement no one noticed her, and her demented shrieks followed

him while he made his way cautiously along the outskirts of the

strikers, until he came to the main building, before which a few men

with muskets had cleared a hollow space. They looked cowed and sullen,

he saw, for their sympathies were evidently with the operatives, and he

realised that the first organised attack would force them from their

dangerous position.

Approaching one of the guards, whom he remembered, Ordway touched him

upon the arm and asked to be permitted to mount to the topmost step. "I

have a message to deliver to the men," he said.

The guard looked up with a start of fear, and then, recognising him,

exclaimed in a hoarse whisper, "My God, boys, it's 'Ten Commandment

Smith' or it's his ghost!"

"Let me get through to the steps," said Ordway, "I must speak to them."

"Well, you may speak all you want to, but I doubt if they'd listen to an

angel from heaven if he were to talk to them about Jasper Trend. They

are preparing a rush on the doors now, and when they make it they'll go

through."

Passing him in silence, Ordway mounted the steps, and stood with his

back against the doors of the main building, in which, when he had last

entered it, the great looms had been at work. Before him the dark mass

heaved back and forth, and farther away, amid the bonfires in the waste

of frozen snow, he could hear the shrill, mocking laughter of the

half-crazed woman.

"We won't hear any talk," cried a spokesman in the front ranks of the

crowd. "It's too late to haggle now. We'll have nothin' from Jasper

Trend unless he gives us what we ask."

"And if he says he'll give it who will believe him?" jeered a woman,

farther back, holding a crying child above her head. "He killed the

father and he's starvin' the children."

"No--no, we'll have no damned words. We'll burn out the scabs!" shouted

a man, lifting a torch he had just lit at a bonfire. As the torch rose

in a splendid blaze, it lighted up the front of the building, and cast a

yellow flame upon Ordway's face.

"I have nothing to do with Jasper Trend!" he called out, straightening

himself to his full height. "He has no part in the mills from to-night!

I have bought them from him!"

With the light on his face, he stood there an instant before them, while

the shouts changed in the first shock of recognition from anger to

surprise. The minute afterward the crowd was rocked by a single gigantic

emotion, and it hurled itself forward, bearing down the guards in its

efforts to reach the steps. As it swayed back and forth its individual

members--men, women and children--appeared to float like straws on some

cosmic undercurrent of feeling.

"From to-night the mills belong to me!" he cried in a voice which rang

over the frozen ground to where the insane woman was laughing beside a

bonfire. "Your grievances after to-night are not against Jasper Trend,

but against me. You shall have fair pay, fair hours and clean rooms, I

promise you----"

He went on still, but his words were drowned in the oncoming rush of the

crowd, which rolled forward like great waters, surrounding him,

overwhelming him, sweeping him off his feet, and bearing him out again

upon its bosom. The cries so lately growls of anger had changed

suddenly, and above all the din and rush he heard rising always the name

which he had made honoured and beloved in Tappahannock. It was the one

great moment of his life, he knew, when on the tremendous swell of

feeling, he was borne like a straw up the hillside and back into the

main street of Tappahannock.

An hour later, bruised, aching and half stunned, he entered the station

and telegraphed twice to Richard Ordway before he went out upon the

platform to take the train. He had left his instructions with Baxter,

from whom he had just parted, and now, as he walked up and down in the

icy darkness, broken by the shivering lights of the station, it seemed

to him that he was like a man, who having been condemned to death,

stands looking back a little wistfully at life from the edge of the

grave. He had had his great moment, and ahead of him there was nothing.

A freight train passed with a grating noise, a station hand, holding a

lantern ran hurriedly along the track, a whistle blew, and then again

there was stillness. His eyes were wearily following the track, when he

felt a touch on his arm, and turning quickly, saw Banks, in a fur-lined

overcoat, looking up at him with an embarrassed air.

"Smith," he said, strangling a cough, "I've seen Baxter, and neither he

nor I like your going West this way all by yourself and half sick. If

you don't mind, I've arranged to take a little holiday and come along.

To tell the truth, it's just exactly the chance I've been looking for. I

haven't been away from Milly twenty-four hours since I married her, and

a change does anybody good."

"No, you can't come, Banks, I don't want you. I'd rather be alone,"

replied Ordway, almost indignantly.

"But you ain't well," insisted Banks stubbornly. "We don't like the

looks of you, Baxter and I."

"Well, you can't come, that's all," retorted Ordway, as the red eyes of

the engine pierced the darkness. "There, go home, Banks," he added, as

he held out his hand, "I'm much obliged to you. You're a first-rate

chap. Good-bye."

"Then good-bye," returned Banks hastily turning away.

A minute afterward, as Ordway swung himself on the train, he heard the

bells of a church, ringing cheerfully in the frosty air, and remembered,

with a start, that it was Christmas morning.

CHAPTER VIII

THE END OF THE ROAD

In the morning, after a short sleep on the hard plush seat, he awoke

with a shooting pain in his head. When the drowsiness of exhaustion had

overcome him, he remembered, he had been idly counting the dazzling

electric lights of a town through which they were passing. By the time

he had reached "twenty-one" he had dropped off into unconsciousness,

though it seemed to him that a second self within him, wholly awake, had

gone on through the night counting without pause, "twenty-two,

twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five--" Still in his brain the numbers

went on, and still the great globular lights flashed past his eyes.

Struggling awake in the gray dawn, he lay without changing his position,

until the mist gave place slowly to the broad daylight. Then he found

that they were approaching another town, which appeared from a distant

view to resemble a single gigantic factory, composed chiefly of a

wilderness of chimneys. When he looked at his watch, he saw that it was

eight o'clock; and the conductor passing through the coach at the

instant, informed the passengers generally that they must change cars

for the West. The name of the town Ordway failed to catch, but it made

so little difference to him that he followed the crowd mechanically,

without inquiring where it would lead him. The pain in his head had

extended now to his chest and shoulders, and presently it passed into

his lower limbs, with a racking ache that seemed to take from him the

control of his muscles. Yet all the while he felt a curious drowsiness,

which did not in the least resemble sleep, creeping over him like the

stealthy effect of some powerful drug. After he had breathed the fresh

air outside, he felt it to be impossible that he should return to the

overheated car, and pushing his way through the crowded station, where

men were rushing to the luncheon counter in one corner, he started along

a broad street, which looked as if it led to an open square at the top

of a long incline. On either side there were rows of narrow tenements,

occupied evidently by the operatives in the imposing factories he had

observed from the train. Here and there a holly wreath suspended from a

cheap lace curtain, reminded him again that it was Christmas morning,

and by some eccentricity of memory, he recalled vividly a Christmas

before his mother's death, when he had crept on his bare feet, in the

dawn, to peep into the bulging stocking before her fireplace.

At the next corner a small eating house had hung out its list of

Christmas dainties, and going inside he sat down at one of the small

deserted tables and asked for a cup of coffee. When it was brought he

swallowed it in the hope that it might drive away the heaviness in his

head, but after a moment of relief the stupor attacked him again more

oppressively than ever. He felt that even the growing agony in his

forehead and shoulders could not keep him awake if he could only find a

spot in which to lie down and rest.

After he came out into the street again he felt stronger and better, and

it occurred to him that his headache was due probably to the fact that

he had eaten nothing since breakfast the day before. He remembered now

that he had missed his luncheon because of his long walk into the

country, and the recollection of this trivial incident seemed to make

plain all the subsequent events. Everything that had been so confused a

moment ago stood out quite clearly now. His emotions, which had been

benumbed when he left Botetourt, revived immediately in the awakening of

his memory; and he was seized with a terrible longing to hold Alice in

his arms and to say to her that he forgave her and loved her still. It

seemed to him impossible that he should have come away after a single

indifferent kiss, without glancing back--and her face rose before him,

not convulsed and haggard as he had last seen it, but glowing and

transfigured, with her sparkling blue eyes and her lips that were too

red and too full for beauty. Then, even while he looked at her with

love, the old numbness crept back, and his feeling for her died utterly

away. "No, I have ceased to care," he thought indifferently. "It does

not matter to me whether I see her again or not. I must eat and lie

down, nothing else is of consequence."

He had reached the open space at the end of the long graded hill, and as

he stopped to look about him he saw that a small hotel, frequented

probably by travelling salesmen, stood directly across the square, which

was now deep in snow. Following the pavement to the open door of the

lobby, he went inside and asked for a room, after which he passed into

the restaurant and drank a second cup of coffee. Then turning away from

his untasted food, he went upstairs to the large, bare apartment, with a

broken window pane, which they had assigned him, and throwing himself

upon the unmade bed, fell heavily asleep.

When he awoke the pain was easier, and feeling oppressed by the chill

vacancy of the room, he went downstairs and out into the open square.

Though it was a dull gray afternoon, the square was filled with

children, dragging bright new sleds over the snow. One of them, a little

brown-haired girl, was trundling her Christmas doll and as she passed

him, she turned and smiled into his face with a joyful look. Something

in her smile was vaguely familiar to him, and he remembered, after a

minute, that Emily had looked at him like that on the morning when he

had met her for the first time riding her old white horse up the hill in

Tappahannock. "Yes, it was that look that made me love her," he thought

dispassionately, as if he were reviewing some dimly remembered event in

a former life, "and it is because I loved her that I was able to do

these things. If I had not loved her, I should not have saved Milly

Trend, nor gone back to Botetourt, nor sacrificed myself for Alice.

Yes, all these have come from that," he added, "and will go back, I

suppose, to that in the end." The little girl ran by again, still

trundling her doll, and again he saw Emily in her red cape on the old

horse.

For several hours he sat there in the frozen square, hardly feeling the

cold wind that blew over him. But when he rose presently to go into the

hotel, he found that his limbs were stiff, and the burning pain had

returned with violence to his head and chest. The snow in the square

seemed to roll toward him as he walked, and it was with difficulty that

he dragged himself step by step along the pavement to the entrance of

the hotel. After he was in his room again he threw himself, still

dressed, upon the bed, and fell back into the stupor out of which he had

come.

When he opened his eyes after an hour, he was hardly sure, for the first

few minutes, whether he was awake or asleep. The large, bare room in

which he had lost consciousness had given place, when he awoke, to his

prison cell. The hard daylight came to him through the grated windows,

and from a nail in the wall he saw his gray prison coat, with the red

bars, won for good behaviour, upon the sleeve. Then while he looked at

it, the red bars changed quickly to the double stripes of a second term,

and the double stripes became three, and the three became four, until it

seemed to him that he was striped from head to foot so closely that he

knew that he must have gone on serving term after term since the

beginning of the world. "No, no, that is not mine. I am wearing the red

bars!" he cried out, and came back to himself with a convulsive shudder.

As he looked about him the hallucination vanished, and he felt that he

had come out of an eternity of unconsciousness into which he should

presently sink back again. The day before appeared to belong to some

other life that he had lived while he was still young, yet when he

opened his eyes the same gray light filled the windows, the same draught

blew through the broken pane, the same vague shadows crawled back and

forth on the ceiling. The headache was gone now, but the room had grown

very cold, and from time to time, when he coughed, long shivers ran

through his limbs and his teeth chattered. He had thrown his overcoat

across his chest as a coverlet, but the cold from which he suffered was

an inward chill, which was scarcely increased by the wind that blew

through the broken pane. There was no confusion in his mind now, but a

wonderful lucidity, in which he saw clearly all that had happened to him

last night in Tappahannock. "Yes, that was my good moment," he said "and

after such a moment there is nothing, but death. If I can only die

everything will be made entirely right and simple." As he uttered the

words the weakness of self pity swept over him, and with a sudden sense

of spiritual detachment, he was aware of a feeling of sympathy for that

other "I," who seemed so closely related to him, and yet outside of

himself. The real "I" was somewhere above amid the crawling shadows on

the ceiling, but the other--the false one--lay on the bed under the

overcoat; and he saw, when he looked down that, though he himself was

young, the other "I" was old and haggard and unshaven. "So there are two

of us, after all," he thought, "poor fellows, poor fellows."

But the minute afterward the perception of his dual nature faded as

rapidly as the hallucination of his prison cell. In its place there

appeared the little girl, who had passed him, trundling her Christmas

doll, in the square below. "I have seen her before--she is vaguely

familiar," he thought, troubled because he could not recall the

resemblance. From this he passed to the memory of Alice when she was

still a child, and she came back to him, fresh and vivid, as on the day

when she had run out to beg him to come in to listen to her music. The

broken scales ran in his head again, but there was no love in his heart.

His gaze dropped from the ceiling and turned toward the door, for in the

midst of his visions, he had seen it open softly and Banks come into the

room on tiptoe and stop at the foot of the bed, regarding him with his

embarrassed and silly look "What in the devil, am I dreaming about Banks

for?" he demanded aloud, with an impatient movement of his feet, as if

he meant to kick the obtruding dream away from his bed.

At the kick the dream stopped rolling its prominent pale eyes and spoke.

"I hope you ain't sick, Smith," it said, and with the first words he

knew that it was Banks in the familiar flesh and not the disembodied

spirit.

"No I'm not sick, but what are you doing here?" he asked.

"Enjoying myself," replied Banks gloomily.

"Well, I wish you'd chosen to enjoy yourself somewhere else."

"I couldn't. If you don't mind I'd like to stuff the curtain into that

window pane."

"Oh, I don't mind. When did you get here?"

"I came on the train with you."

"On the train with me? Where did you get on? I didn't see you."

"You didn't look," replied Banks, from the window, where he was stuffing

the red velveteen curtain into the broken pane. "I was in the last seat

in the rear coach."

"So you followed me," said Ordway indignantly. "I told you not to. Why

did you do it?"

Banks came back and stood again at the foot of the bed, looking at him

with his sincere and kindly smile.

"Well, the truth is, I wanted an outing," he answered, "it's a good baby

as babies go, but I get dog-tired of playing nurse."

"You might have gone somewhere else. There are plenty of places."

"I couldn't think of 'em, and, besides, this seems a nice town. The're a

spanking fine lot of factories. But I hope you ain't sick Smith? What

are you doing in bed?"

"Oh, I've given up," replied Ordway gruffly. "Every man has a right to

give up some time, hasn't he?"

"I don't know about every man," returned Banks, stolidly, "but you

haven't, Smith."

"Well, I've done it anyway," retorted Ordway, and turned his face to the

wall.

As he lay there with closed eyes, he had an obscure impression that

Banks--Banks, the simple; Banks, the impossible--was in some way

operating the forces of destiny. First he heard the bell ring, then the

door open and close, and a little later, the bleak room was suffused

with a warm rosy light in which the vague shadows melted into a

shimmering background. The crackling of the fire annoyed him because it

suggested the possibility of physical comfort, and he no longer wanted

to be comfortable.

"Smith," said Banks, coming over to the bed and pulling off the

overcoat, "I've got a good fire here and a chair. I wish you'd get up.

Good Lord, your hands are as hot as a hornet's nest. When did you eat

anything?"

"I had breakfast in Botetourt," replied Ordway, as he rose from the bed

and came over to the chair Banks had prepared. "I can't remember when it

was, but it must have been since the creation of the world, I suppose."

The fire grew suddenly black before him, "I'd rather lie down," he

added, "my head is splitting and I can't see."

"Oh, you'll see all right in a minute. Wait till I light this candle, so

the electric light won't hurt your eyes. The boy's gone for a little

supper, and as soon as you've swallowed a mouthful you'll begin to feel

better."

"But I'm not hungry. I won't eat," returned Ordway, with an irritable

feeling that Banks was looming into a responsibility. Anything that

pulled one back to life was what he wanted to escape, and even the

affection of Banks might prove, he thought, tenaciously clinging. One

resolution he had made in the beginning--he would not take up his life

again for the sake of Banks.

"Yes, you must, Smith," remonstrated the other, with an angelic patience

which gave him, if possible, a more foolish aspect. "It's after six

o'clock and you haven't had a bite since yesterday at eight. That's why

your head's so light and you're in a raging fever."

"It isn't that, Banks, it's because I've got to die," he answered. "If

they don't hush things up with money, I may have to go back to prison."

As he said the words he saw again the prison coat, with the double

stripes of a second term, as in the instant of his hallucination.

"I know," said Banks, softly, as he bent over to poke the fire. "There

was a line or two about it in a New York paper. But they'll hush it up,

and besides they said it was just suspicion."

"You knew all the time and yet you wanted me to go back to

Tappahannock?"

"Oh, they don't read the papers much there, except the _Tappahannock

Herald_, and it won't get into that. It was just a silly little slip

anyway, and not two dozen people will be likely to know what it meant."

"And you, Banks? What do you think?" he asked with a mild curiosity.

Banks shook his head. "Why, what's the use in your asking?" he replied.

"Of course, I know that you didn't do it, and if you had done it, it

would have been just because the other man ought to have written his

name and wouldn't," he concluded, unblushingly.

For a moment Ordway looked at him in silence. "You're a good chap,

Banks," he said at last in a dull voice. Again he felt, with an awakened

irritation, that the absurd Banks was pulling him back to life. Was it

impossible, after all, that a man should give up, as long as there

remained a soul alive who believed in him? It wasn't only the love of

women, then, that renewed courage. He had loved both Emily and Alice,

and yet they were of less importance in his life at this hour than was

Banks, whom he had merely endured. Yet he had thought the love of Emily

a great thing and that of Banks a small one.

His gaze went back to the flames, and he did not remove it when a knock

came at the door, and supper was brought in and placed on a little table

before the fire.

"I ordered a bowl of soup for you, Smith," said Banks, crumbling the

bread into it as he spoke, as if he were preparing a meal for a baby,

"and a good stout piece of beefsteak for myself. Now drink this

whiskey, won't you."

"I'm not hungry," returned Ordway, pushing the glass away, after it had

touched his lips. "I won't eat."

Banks placed the bowl of soup on the fender, and then sat down with his

eyes fastened on the tray. "I haven't had a bite myself since

breakfast," he remarked, "and I'm pretty faintish, but I tell you,

Smith, if it's the last word I speak, that I won't put my knife into

that beefsteak until you've eaten your soup--no, not if I die right here

of starvation."

"Well, I'm sorry you're such a fool, for I've no intention of eating it.

I left you my whiskey, you can take that."

"I shouldn't dare to on an empty stomach. I get drunk too quick."

For a few minutes he sat in silence regarding the supper with a hungry

look; then selecting a thin slice of bread, he stuck it on the end of a

fork, and kneeling upon the hearthrug, held it out to the glowing coals.

As it turned gradually to a delicious crisp brown, the appetising smell

of it floated to Ordway's nostrils.

"I always had a particular taste for toast," remarked Banks as he

buttered the slice and laid it on a hot plate on the fender. When he

took up a second one, Ordway watched him with an attention of which he

was almost unconscious, and he did not remove his gaze from the fire,

until the last slice, brown and freshly buttered, was laid carefully

upon the others. As he finished Banks threw down his fork, and rising

to his feet, looked wistfully at the beefsteak, keeping hot before the

cheerful flames.

"It's kind of rare, just as I like it," he observed, "thick and juicy,

with little brown streaks from the broiler, and a few mushrooms

scattered gracefully on top. Tappahannock is a mighty poor place for a

steak," he concluded resignedly, "it ain't often I have a chance at one,

but I thought to-night being Christmas----"

"Then, for God's sake, eat it!" thundered Ordway, while he made a dash

for his soup.

But an hour after he had taken it, his fever rose so high that Banks

helped him into bed and rushed out in alarm for the doctor.

CHAPTER IX

THE LIGHT BEYOND

Out of the obscurity of the next few weeks, he brought, with the memory

of Banks hovering about his bed, the vague impression of a woman's step

across his floor and a woman's touch on his brow and hands. When he

returned to consciousness the woman's step and touch had vanished, but

Banks was still nursing him with his infinite patience and his silly,

good-humoured smile. The rest was a dream, he said to himself,

resignedly, as he turned his face to the wall and slept.

On a mild January morning, when he came downstairs for the first time,

and went with Banks out into the open square in front of the hotel, he

put almost timidly the question which had been throbbing in his brain

for weeks.

"Was there anybody else with me, Banks? I thought--I dreamed--I couldn't

get rid of it----"

"Who else could there have been?" asked Banks, and he stared straight

before him, at the slender spire of the big, gray church in the next

block. So the mystery would remain unsolved, Ordway understood, and he

would go back to life cherishing either a divine memory or a phantasy of

delirium.

After a little while Banks went off to the chemists' with a

prescription, and Ordway sat alone on a bench in the warm sunshine,

which was rapidly melting the snow. It was Sunday morning, and presently

the congregation streamed slowly past him on its way to the big gray

church just beyond. A bright blue sky was overhead, the sound of bells

was in the air, and under the melting snow he saw that the grass was

still fresh and green. As he sat there in the wonderful Sabbath

stillness, he felt, with a new sense of security, of reconciliation,

that his life had again been taken out of his hands and adjusted without

his knowledge. This time it had been Banks--Banks, the impossible--who

had swayed his destiny, and lacking all other attributes, Banks had

accomplished it through the simple power of the human touch. In the hour

of his need it had been neither religion nor philosophy, but the

outstretched hand, that had helped. Then his vision broadened and he saw

that though the body of love is one, the members of it are infinite; and

it was made plain to him at last, that the love of Emily, the love of

Alice, and the love of Banks, were but different revelations of the same

immortality. He had gone down into the deep places, and out of them he

had brought this light, this message. As the people streamed past him to

the big gray church, he felt that if they would only stop and listen, he

could tell them in the open, not in walls, of the thing that they were

seeking. Yet the time had not come, though in the hope of it he could

sit there patiently under the blue sky, with the snow melting over the

grass at his feet.

At the end of an hour Banks returned, and stood over him with

affectionate anxiety. "In a few days you'll be well enough to travel,

Smith, and I'll take you back with me to Tappahannock."

Ordway glanced up, smiling, and Banks saw in his face, so thin that the

flesh seemed almost transparent, the rapt and luminous look with which

he had stood over his Bible in the green field or in the little grove of

pines.

"You will go back to Tappahannock and Baxter will take you in until you

grow strong and well, and then you can start your schools, or your

library, and look after the mills instead of letting Baxter do it."

"Yes," said Ordway, "yes," but he had hardly heard Banks's words, for

his gaze was on the blue sky, against which the spire of the church rose

like a pointing finger. His face shone as if from an inward flame, and

this flame, burning clearly in his blue eyes, transfigured his look. Ah,

Smith was always a dreamer, thought Banks, with the uncomprehending

simplicity of a child.

But Ordway was looking beyond Banks, beyond the church spire, beyond the

blue sky. He saw himself, not as Banks pictured him, living quietly in

Tappahannock, but still struggling, still fighting, still falling to

rise and go on again. His message was not for Tappahannock alone, but

for all places where there were men and women working and suffering and

going into prison and coming out. He heard his voice speaking to them in

the square of this town; then in many squares and in many towns----

"Come," said Banks softly, "the wind is changing. It is time to go in."

With an effort Ordway withdrew his gaze from the church spire. Then

leaning upon Banks's arm, he slowly crossed the square to the door of

the hotel. But before going inside, he turned and stood for a moment

looking back at the grass which showed fresh and green under the melting

snow.