“So you were spinning,” he said. His voice was very weak, but how

different from those tones of dreadful clearness, of hoarse muttering,

with which she had been so sadly familiar.

Pomona knelt beside him and put her hand on his forehead, on his wrist.

“Thank God!” she said.

“By all means,” he answered, peering at her amusedly. “Natheless, why?”

“Nay, you must not speak,” she bade him, and rose to pour the soup into

a bowl.

He watched her while she stirred and tasted and added salt. He was

smiling. When she lifted him, pillows and all, propped against her

strong arm, and held the bowl to his lips at a compelling angle, he

laughed outright. It was rather a feeble thing in the way of laughs,

but to Pomona it was as wonderful and beautiful an achievement as a

child’s first word in the mother’s ear.

“Drink,” she said, firmly, while her heart throbbed in joy.

“Now you must sleep,” she added, as she settled him with extraordinary

art. But sleep was far away from those curious wandering eyes.

“Bring the light closer and come to the bed again.”

His voice had gained strength from Pomona’s fine broth, and it rang in

command. Without another word she obeyed him. As she sat down on the

little oaken stool, where he could see her, the light fell on her face,

and from behind her the fire shot ruddily in her crown of hair.

“I remember you now,” said he, lifting himself on his elbow. “You

stood in the sunrise gathering apples for preserve; you are the nymph

of the orchard.”

He fell back, with a sigh of satisfaction. “And your name is Pomona,”

said he.

The girl, her capable, work-marked hands lying folded on her knee, sat

in absolute stillness; but her heart was beating stormily under the

folds of her kerchief.

The sick man’s beard had grown close and fine round chin and cheeks

during these long dreams of his. His hair lay in a mass on one

shoulder; it had been carefully tied back with a riband, and in all

that black setting the pallor of his countenance seemed deathlike. Yet

she knew that he was saved. He lay a while, gazing at the beflowered

ceiling of the great four-post bed, and by and by his voice came

sighing.

“And after that, what hap befell me? Help me to remember.”

“I found you in the wood,” said she, slowly. “You were lying wounded.”

He interrupted her with a sharp cry.

“Enough! I mind me now. Was I alone?”

“Quite alone, my lord.”

“And my sword?”

There was a current of evil eagerness running through the feeble voice.

“Your sword, my lord?”

“Pshaw! was it clean, child? Bore it no sign upon the blade?”

“There was blood on it,” said Pomona, gravely, “to a third of the

length.”

The duelist gave a sigh.

“That is well,” said he, and fell once more into silence, striving to

knit present and past in his mind.

After a while he shifted himself on his pillows so that he again looked

on her.

Then his eyes wandered round the dark paneling, on the polished surface

of which the firelight gleamed like rosy flowers. He touched the coarse

sheet, the patchwork quilt, then lifted the sleeve of the homespun

shirt that covered his thin arm, and gazed inquiringly from it to the

quiet woman.

“How do I come here? Where am I?” queried he, imperiously.

“I brought you; you are in my house,” she answered him.

“You brought me?”

“Ay, my lord.”

“You found me wounded,” he puzzled, drawing his haughty brows together,

“and you brought me here to your house? How?”

“I carried you,” said Pomona.

“You carried me!”

The statement was so amazing and Lord Blantyre’s wits were still so

weakened that he turned giddy and was fain to close his eyes and allow

the old vagueness to cradle him again for a few minutes.

Pomona prayed that he might be sleeping, but as she was stealthily

rising from his bedside he opened his eyes and held her with them.

“You carried me, you brought me to your own house? Why?”

“I wanted to nurse you,” said poor Pomona.

She knew no artifice whereby she could answer, yet conceal the truth.

But it was as if her heart were being torn from her bit by bit.

His eyes, hard and curious, softened; so did the imperious voice.

“How did you keep them out?”

“Keep them out?”

She was beautiful, but she was dull.

“My kinsfolk, from the castle.”

Pomona stood like a child caught in grave fault.

“They do not know,” she answered, at last.

It was his turn to ejaculate in amazement. “Not know!”

“I did not want them,” said she, then, doggedly. “I did not want any

fine ladies about, nor physicians with their lancets. When my father

was cut with the scythe, they sent a leech from the castle, who blooded

him, and he died. I did not want you to die.”

She spoke the last words almost in a whisper, then she waited

breathlessly. There came a low sound from the pillows. His laugh that

had been music to her a minute ago now stabbed her to the heart. She

turned, the blood flashing into her cheeks; yet his face grew quickly

grave; he spoke, his voice was kind.

“Stay. I want to understand. You carried me, all by yourself, from the

wood; is it so?”

“Ay.”

“And no one knows where I am, or that you found me?”

“No. I went down to the wood again and brought back your coat and your

sword and scabbard and your gloves. I forbade my people to speak. None

of the great folk know you are here.”

“And you nursed me?”

“Ay.”

“Was I long ill?”

“Fourteen days.”

“I have been near death, have I not?”

“You have, indeed.”

“And you nursed me!” he repeated again. “How did you learn such

science?”

“My lord, I have loved and cared for the dumb things all my life. There

was the calf that was staked----” She stopped; that laugh was torture.

“Go on, Pomona!”

“I bathed your wound in cold water over and over till the bleeding

stopped, and then, when the fever came, I knew what brew of herbs would

help you. One night I thought that you would die----”

“Go on, Pomona!”

“You could not breathe, no matter how high I laid you on the

pillows----”

“Ay! Why dost thou halt again? What didst thou then?”

“I held you in my arms,” she said. “You seemed to get your breath

better that way, and then you slept at last.”

“While you held me?” he proceeded. “How long did you hold me in your

arms, Pomona?”

“My lord,” she said, “the whole night.”

Upon this he kept silence quite a long time, and she sat down on her

stool again and waited. She had nursed him and saved him, and now he

would soon be well; she ought surely to rejoice, but, she knew not why,

her heart was like lead. Presently he called her; he would be lifted,

shifted, his pillows were hot, his bedclothes pressed on him. As she

bent over him, the fretful expression suddenly was smoothed from his

features.

“I remember now,” he said, with a singular gleam in his eyes. “I

remember, Pomona; you kissed me.”

* * * * *

My Lord Blantyre began now to have more consecutive recollections of

that time of dreams; and when the night came he felt mightily injured,

mightily affronted, to find that the shadow of the watcher in the

rushlight against the wall belonged to a bent and aged figure, was a

grotesque profile, instead of the mild gray angel that had soothed him

hitherto. So deep seemed the injury, so cruel the neglect, that the

ill-used patient could not find it in him to consent to sleep, but

tossed till his bed grew unbearable, pettishly refused to drink from

Mall’s withered hand, was quite positive that the pain in his side was

very bad again, and that his angry heart beats were due to fever.

It drew toward midnight. Again Mall brought the cooling drink and

offered it patiently. Like an old owl she stood and blinked. Her

toothless jaws worked.

He made an angry gesture of refusal; the cup was dashed from her hand

and fell clattering on the boards. She cried out in dismay, and he in

fury.

“Out of my sight, you Hecate!”

Then suddenly Pomona stood beside them. So soft her tread that neither

had heard her come.

“Lord, be good to us! The poor gentleman’s mad again,” whimpered Mall,

as she went down on her knees to mop.

Pomona was in a white wrapper, well starched; the wide sleeves spread

out like wings. Her hair hung in one loose plait to her knees.

“You look like a monstrous, beautiful great angel,” cried he. Her hand

was on his pulse. He was as pleased and soothed as a naughty infant

when it is lifted from its cradle and nursed.

She stood, and seemed encircled by the fragrance of the sacrificed cup,

lavender and thyme and other sweet and wholesome herbs.

She thought he wandered, yet his pulse was steadying down under her

finger into a very reasonable pace for a convalescent. She looked down

at him with puzzled eyes.

“What is it, my lord?”

“Prithee,” said he, “though you live so quiet here, my maid, and keep

your secrets so well, you would have known, would you not, had there

been a death at the castle?”

“Surely, my lord,” she said, and bent closer to comfort him. “Nay, it

must be that you have the fever again, I fear. Nay, all is well with

your kinsfolk. Mall, haste thee with another cup of the drink. Is the

wound painful, my good lord, and how goes it with the breathing?”

As he bent he caught her great plait in both his hands and held it so

that she could not straighten herself.

“It would go vastly better,” cried he, “I should breathe with infinite

more ease, my sweet nurse, and forget that I had ever had a gaping

hole to burn the side of me, could you but tell me that there had been

even a trifle of sickness at the house beyond. Come, my sword was red,

you know! It was not red for nothing! Was not Master Leech sent for in

haste to draw more blood? The excellent physician, thou mindest, who

helped thy worthy father so pleasantly from this world.”

She would have drawn from him in soft sorrow and shame, for she

understood now, but that his weak fingers plucked her back. Truly there

seemed to be a devil in his eyes. Yet she was too tender of him not to

humor him, as the mother her spoiled child.

“Hast heard, Mall, of aught amiss at the castle?” quoth she, turning

her head to address the old woman at the fire.

“There was a gentleman out hunting with the Lady Julia o’ Thursday,”

answered the crone, “as carried his arm in a sling, I heard tell;

though he rode with the best of them.”

“Faugh!”

Lord Blantyre loosed Pomona’s tress and lay back sullenly. He drank the

cup when she held it to his lips, in the same sullen silence; but when

she shook his pillows and smoothed his sheet and cooed to him in the

dear voice of his dream: “Now, sleep,” he murmured, complainingly: “Not

if you leave me!”

Pomona’s heart gave a great leap, and a rose flush grew on her face,

lovelier than ever sunrise or fireglow had called there.

“I will not leave you, my lord,” she replied. Her voice filled the

whole room with deep harmony.

He woke in the gray dawn, and there sat Pomona, her eyes dreaming,

her hands clasped, her face a little stern in its serene, patient

weariness. He cried to her sharply, because of the sharpness with which

his heart smote him:

“Hast sat thus the whole night long?”

“Surely!” said she.

“Well, to bed with you, then,” he bade her, impatiently. “Nay, I want

nought. Send one of your wenches to my bell, some Sue or Pattie, so it

be a young one. And you--to bed, to bed!”

But she would not leave him till she had tested how it stood with him,

according to her simple skill. As her hand rested on his brow, “Why

Pomona?” queried he.

“My lord?”

“Pomona. ’Tis a marvelous fine name, and marvelous fitting to a nymph

of the orchard. Pomona!”

“Indeed,” she answered him, in her grave way, “Sue or Pattie would

better become me. But my mother was book-learned, sir, and town-bred,

and had her fancies. She sat much in the orchard the spring that I was

born.”

“Ay,” he mused. “So thy mother was book-learned and fanciful!” Then

briskly he asked her: “Wouldst thou not like to know my name, Pomona?

Unless, indeed, you know it already?”

She shook her head.

“Why, what a woman are you! In spite of apples, no daughter of Eve at

all?”

She still shook her head, and, smiling faintly, “To me it could make no

difference,” she said.

“Well, now you shall know,” he said, “and take it to your maiden

dreams. I am Rupert, Earl of Blantyre.”

“What,” she cried, quickly, “the----” she broke off and hesitated. “The

great Earl of Blantyre,” she pursued, then, dropping her eyes: “The

king’s friend!”

His laugh rang out somewhat harsh.

“What, so solitary a nymph, so country hidden, and yet so learned of

the gossip of the great world?”

“People talk,” she murmured, crimsoning as in the deepest shame.

“And you know what they call me? No! Not the Great Earl, hypocrite, the

Wicked Earl! You knew it?”

She bent her head.

He laughed again. “Why, now, what a nightmare for you! Here he lies,

and, oh! Pomona, you have prolonged his infamous career!”

* * * * *

The Wicked Earl was an angelic patient for two days. On the third

he was promoted to the oak settle, wrapped in a garment of the late

farmer’s, of which he made much kindly mirth. It was a golden day of

joy in the lonely farmhouse.

On the fourth morning, however, he wakened to a mood of seriousness,

not to say ill-temper. His first words were to request writing paper

and a quill, ink and the great seal that hung on his watch chain.

Pomona stood by while he wrote; helped him with paper and wax. She saw

into how deep a frown his brows were contracted, and her heart seemed

altogether to fail her. She expected the end; it was coming swiftly,

and not as she expected it.

“May I trespass on your kindness so far as to send a horseman with this

letter to the castle?” said he, very formally.

She took it from him with her country courtesy.

“You will be leaving us, my lord?”

He glanced at her through his drooping lids.

“Can I trespass forever on your hospitality?”

She went forth with the letter quickly, without another word.

It was but little after noon when there came a great clatter into the

simple farmyard that was wont to echo to no louder sounds than the

lumbering progress of the teamsters and their wagon, or the patient

steps of Pomona’s dairy cows. A great coach with four horses and

running footmen had drawn up before the farm porch. A man in dark

livery, with a sleek, secret face, slipped down from the rumble,

reached for a valise and disappeared round the house. The coach door

opened, and the Lady Julia Majendie descended, followed by no less a

person than my Lord Majendie himself, who was seldom known to leave his

library, much less to accompany his daughter out driving. His presence

marked a great occasion. And with them was a very fine lady, a stranger

to any of the farm, a little lady with dark hair in ringlets and high

plumes to a great hat, and a dress that shone with as many pale colors

as a pigeon’s breast. She sniffed, and “Oh!” cried she in very high,

loud tones, pressing a vinaigrette to her nose, “can my poor brother be

in such a place, and yet alive?”

“Hush, madam,” said Lord Majendie, somewhat testily, for Pomona stood

in the door. “I am sure we owe nought but gratitude to this young

woman.”

He was a gaunt, snuffy, untidy old man, in a dilapidated wig, but his

eyes were shrewd and kindly behind the large, gold-rimmed spectacles.

He peered at Pomona, pale and beautiful.

Lady Julia had evidently inherited her father’s short sight, for she,

too, was staring through an eyeglass. She carried it on a gold chain,

and when she lifted it to one eye her small fair face took an air of

indescribable impertinence.

She interrupted father and friend, coming to the front with a scarcely

perceptible movement of pointed elbows:

“Bring us instantly to Lord Blantyre.”

“This way an it please you,” said Pomona.

She led them in, and there in the great kitchen, well within the glow

from the deep hearth, propped on patchwork cushions, wrapped in blue

homespun, lay the invalid.

The ladies were picking their steps across the flags with a great

parade of lifting silken skirts; the worthy old scholar, Lord Majendie,

was following, with an expression of benign, childlike interest,

but all three seemed struck by the same amazement, almost amounting

to consternation. Lord Blantyre lifted his pallid, black-bearded

countenance and looked at them with a gaze of uncompromising ill-humor.

“Good Lord, brother!” exclaimed the little lady with the ringlets, at

last. She made a faint lurch against Lady Julia.

“If your sisterly feelings are too much for you, and you are

contemplating a swoon, pray be kind enough to accomplish it elsewhere,

Alethea,” said Lord Blantyre.

“Oh, my excellent young friend! Oh, my dear lord! Tut! tut! tut! I

should hardly have known you,” ejaculated the old man. “You must tell

us how this has come about; we must get you home. Tush! you must not

speak. I see you are yet but weakly. My good young woman, this has been

a terrible business--nay, I have no doubt he does your nursing infinite

credit, but why not have let us know? Tut! tut!”

Before Pomona could speak, and, indeed, as she had no excuse to offer,

the words were slow in coming, her patient intervened, curtly.

“I would not permit her to tell you,” quoth he.

She glanced at him, startled; his eyes were averted.

“Oh, my lord, this is cruel hearing for us,” minced Julia.

She might have spoken to the wall for all the effect her smile and ogle

produced on him. She turned her glass upon Pomona, and ran it up and

down her till the poor girl felt herself so coarse, so common, so ugly,

that she could have wished herself dead.

“Pray, Lord Majendie,” said Blantyre, “is Colonel Craven yet with you?”

Lady Alethea tossed her head, flushed and shot a look, half defiance,

half fear, at her brother.

He propped himself up on his elbow, turned and surveyed her with a

sneering smile.

“How pale and wasted art thou, my fair Alethea! Hast been nursing the

wounded hero, and pining with his pangs? Or is’t, perchance, all fond

fraternal anguish concerning my unworthy self? Oh, see you, I know what

an uproar you made about me all over the countryside, what a hue and

cry for the lost brother.”

“A plague on it, Julia,” said Lord Majendie, scratching his wig

perplexedly and addressing his daughter in a loud whisper, “what ails

the fellow? Does he wander, think you?”

But Lady Alethea seemed to find a meaning in the sick man’s words, for

she tossed her head once more, and answered sharply:

“No, brother, I made no hue and cry for you, for ’tis not the first

time it has been your pleasure to play truant and leave your loving

friends all without news. How was I to know that you were more sorely

hurt than Colonel Craven? He left you, he told us, standing by a tree,

laughing at his pierced arm. You are not wont to come out of these

affairs so ill.”

That they were of the same blood could not be doubted, for it was the

very same sneer that sat on both their mouths.

“And pray, since we must bandy words,” she went on, gaining yet more

boldness, “why did you thus keep me willfully in suspense?”

“Because,” said he, sweetly, “I was too ill for thy nursing, my

Alethea.”

“I presume,” said she, “you had a nurse to your fancy?”

Her black eyes rolled flashing on Pomona. The earl made no reply.

“Let me assure your lordship,” put in his would-be host here, quickly,

“that Colonel Craven is gone.”

”’Tis well, then,” replied Blantyre, ceremoniously, “and I will,

with your permission, this very night avail myself of your offer of

hospitality for a few days, but you will, I fear, have to send a

litter for me. To sit in a coach is yet beyond me.”

And while the good-natured nobleman instantly promised compliance, Lord

Blantyre, waving away further discourse with a gesture, went on wearily:

“Let me beg of you not to remain or keep these ladies in surroundings

so little suited to their gentility. And the sooner, my good lord,

you can dispatch that litter, the sooner shall you have the joy of my

company. Farewell, Julia, for but a brief space. I trust that you and

Colonel Craven enjoyed the chase the other day. We shall meet soon

again, sister; pray you bear up against our present parting.”

Both the ladies swept him such very fine courtesies that the homely

kitchen seemed full of the rustle of silk. Lady Julia Majendie had a

little fixed smile on her lips.

The farm servants were all watching at the windows to see the great

ladies get into their coach, to see it wheel about with the four horses

clattering and curvetting. Pomona and Lord Blantyre were alone. She

stood, her back against the wall, her head held high, not in pride,

for Pomona knew no pride, but with the natural carriage of her perfect

strength and balance. Her eyes looked forth, grieving yet untearful,

her mouth was set into lines of patient endurance. He regarded her

darkly.

“I go this evening, Pomona.”

“Ay, my lord.”

The tall wooden clock ticked off a heavy minute.

“Is my man here?” asked Lord Blantyre. “Bid him come to me, then, to

help me to my room.”

His lordship’s toilet was a lengthy proceeding, for neither his

strength nor his temper was equal to the strain. But it was at length

accomplished, and, perfumed, shaven, clothed once again in fine linen

and silk damask, wrapped in a great furred cloak, Lord Blantyre sat in

the wooden armchair and drank the cordial that Pomona had prepared him.

He was panting with his exertions, his heart was fluttering, but

Pomona’s recipes were cunning; in a little while he felt his pulses

calm down and a glow of power return to him, and with the help of his

cane and his servant he was able to advance toward the door.

“The young woman is outside, waiting to take leave of your lordship,”

volunteered the sleek Craik.

His master halted, and fixed him with an arrogant eye.

“The young woman of the farm,” explained the valet, glibly, “and,

knowing your lordship likes me to see to these details, I have brought

a purse of gold--twenty pieces, my lord.”

He stretched out his hand and chinked the silken bag as he spoke.

“For whom is that?” asked Lord Blantyre.

The man stared.

“For the young woman, my lord.”

Lord Blantyre steadied himself with the hand that gripped the speaker’s

arm; then, lifting the cane with the other, struck the fellow across

the knuckles so sharply that with a howl he let the purse fall.

“Pick it up,” said the Wicked Earl. “Put it into your pocket, and

remember, for the future, that the servant who presumes to know his

master’s business least understands his own.”

The litter was brought to the door of his chamber, and they carried him

out through the kitchen to the porch; and there, where Pomona stood

waiting, he bade them halt and set it down. She leaned toward him to

look on him, she told herself, for the last time. Her heart contracted

to see him so wan and exhausted.

“Good-by, Pomona,” said he, gazing up into her sorrowful eyes,

distended in the evening dimness. He had seen a deer look at him thus,

in the dusk, out of a thicket.

“Good-by, my lord,” said she.

“Ah, Pomona,” said he, “I made a sweeter journey the day I came here!”

And without another word to her he signed to the men, and they buckled

to their task again.

Her heart shuddered as she watched the slow procession pass into the

shadows. They might have been bearing a coffin. With the instinct

of her inarticulate grief, she went to seek the last memory of him

in his room. By the light of a flaring tallow candle, she found Lord

Blantyre’s man repacking his master’s valise. He looked offensively at

her as she entered.

“Young woman,” said he, shaking his head, “you have taken a very great

liberty.”

Then, picking up the coarse white shift and surveying it with an air of

intense disgust, ”’Tis a wonder,” quoth he, “his lordship didn’t die of

this.”

* * * * *

“I fear, my fair Julia, that fondly as I should love it, I shall never

call you sister.”

Julia turned at the fleer and flung a glance of acute anger at her

friend.

“If you had not been yourself so determined to have the nursing of

Colonel Craven’s wound, my dearest Alethea,” responded she, sweetly,

“the friendly desire of your heart might be in a better way of

accomplishment. And, oh!”--she fanned herself and tittered--“I pity

you, my poor Alethea, I do, indeed, when I think of those wasted

attentions.”

Lady Alethea had her feelings less under control than her cool-blooded

friend. Her dark cheek empurpled, her full lips trembled.

“My woman tells me,” proceeded Julia, “that the creature Craik, your

brother’s man, hath no doubt of my lord Blantyre’s infatuation.

‘Pomona!’ he will call in his sleep. Pomona! ’Tis the wench’s name. I

wish you joy of your sister-in-law, indeed.”

Lady Alethea wheeled upon her with an eye of fire.

“Need my brother wed the woman because he calls upon her name?” she

mocked.

“If I know my lord your brother, he might well wed her even because

he need not,” smiled the other. “Now you are warned. ’Tis none of my

concern, I thank my Providence! You will be saved a dairymaid at least.”

Alethea’s wavering color, her flurried breath, bore witness to

discomposure.

“My Lord Blantyre,” pursued Lady Julia Majendie, relentlessly, “has

ever taken pleasure in astonishing the world.”

Lady Alethea clinched her hands.

“Your father rules here; let him transport the slut!”

“Nay,” said Julia. She placed her hand upon the heaving shoulder, and

looked at her friend with a singular light in her pale yet brilliant

eyes. “Do you think to break a man of a fancy by such measures? ’Twould

be as good as forging the ring. Nay, my sweet, I can better help thee;

ay, and give thee an hour’s sport besides.”

And, as Alethea raised questioning eyes, Julia Majendie shook her

silver-fair ringlets and laughed again.

“Leave it to me,” quoth she.

* * * * *

“Will Mistress Pomona favor the Lady Julia Majendie with her company at

the castle?”

This was the message carried to the farmhouse by a mounted servant. He

had a pillion behind him on the stout palfrey, and his orders were, he

said, to bring Mistress Pomona back with him.

Pomona came running out, with the harvest sunshine on her copper hair;

her cheek was drained of blood.

“Is my lord ill again?” she queried, breathlessly.

The man shook his head; either he was dull or well drilled.

Pomona mounted behind him without a second’s more delay, just as she

was, bareheaded, her apron stained with apple juice, and her sleeves

rolled up above her elbows. She had no thought for herself, and only

spoke to bid the servant hurry.

For a fortnight she had heard no word of her patient. In her simple

heart she could conceive no other reason for being summoned now than

because he needed her nursing.

But when she reached the castle and was passed with mocking ceremony

from servant to servant, the anxious questions died on her lips; and

when she was ushered, at length, into a vast bedchamber, hung with

green silk, gold fringed, and was greeted by Lady Julia, all in green

herself, like a mermaid, smiling sweetly at her from between her pale

ringlets, she was so bewildered that she forgot even to courtesy. She

never heeded how the tire-woman, who had last received her, tittered as

she closed the door.

“A fair morning to you, mistress,” said Lady Julia. “I am sensible of

your kindness in coming to my hasty invitation.”

“Madam,” faltered Pomona, and remembered her _révérence_; “I am ever at

your service, honorable madam. I hope my lord is not sick again.”

“My father?” mocked the mermaid, running her white hand through her

curls. But Pomona neither understood nor practiced the wiles of women.

“I meant my Lord Blantyre,” said she.

“Oh, the lord earl, your patient; nay, it goes better with him. Oh,

he has been sadly, sadly. We have had a sore and anxious time; such a

wound as his, neglected----” she shook her ringlets.

Pomona’s lip suddenly trembled, she caught it between her teeth to

steady it.

“Ah,” said Julia, interrupting herself and turning on her chair, “here

comes the Lady Alethea.”

Alethea entered, mincing on high-heeled shoes, her cherry lips pursed,

her dark eyes dancing, as if a pair of mischievous sprites had taken

lodging there. She gazed at Pomona, so large, so work-stained, so

incongruous a figure in the bright, luxurious room. Her nostrils

dilated. She looked as wicked as a kid.

“My brother,” said she, addressing her friend, though she kept staring

at Pomona, “has heard of this wench’s arrival. He would speak with her.”

“I will go with you, even now,” said Pomona.

Both the ladies shrieked; so did the maid who had followed Lady Alethea

into the room.

“My good creature! In that attire?”

“My brother, so fastidious, so suffering!”

“And she,” cried the tire-woman, taking up the note, “still with the

stench of the saucepan about her! Positively, madam, the room reeks.”

If Pomona carried any savors beyond those of lavender and the herbs she

loved, it was of good sweet apples and fragrant burnt sugar. But she

stood in her humiliation, and felt herself more unfit for all the high

company than the beasts of her farmyard.

“You must not take it unkindly, child,” said Lady Julia, with her

cruel little laugh and her soft voice, “but my Lord Blantyre, you see,

hath ever a great distaste of all that is homely and uncomely. He hath

suffered extraordinarily in that respect of late. We must humor him.”

Truly Pomona was punished. She marveled now at herself, remembering

what her presumption had been.

“I will go home, madam, if you permit me.”

Again the ladies cried out. To thwart the invalid--’twas impossible.

Was the girl mad? Nay, she would do as they bid? ’Twas well, then.

Lady Julia, so kind was she, would help to clothe her in some better

apparel and make her fit to present herself. The while the Lady Alethea

would return to her post of assiduous nurse, and inform his lordship of

Pomona’s speedy attendance.

Pomona gave herself into their hands.

Lord Blantyre lay on a couch in the sunshine. A fountain played merrily

to his right; to his left his sister sat demurely at embroidery. In

spite of her ladyship’s melancholy account, the patient seemed to have

gained marvelously in strength. But he was in no better humor with the

world than on the last day of his stay at the farm.

He tossed and fretted among his rich cushions.

“She tarries,” he said, irritably, for the twentieth time. “You are all

in league to plague me. Why did you tell me she was coming?”

“My good brother,” answered the fair embroideress, tilting her head

to fling him the family sneer, “I pray you curb your impatience, for

yonder comes your siren.”

Here was Julia, indeed, undulating toward them, and, after her, Pomona!

Lord Blantyre sat up suddenly and stared. Then he fell back on his

cushions and shot a look at Alethea, before which she quailed.

Stumbling in high heels that tripped her at every step, she who had

been wont to move free as a goddess; scarce able to breathe in the

laced bodice that pressed her form out of all its natural shapeliness,

and left so much of her throat bare that the white skin was all crimson

in shame down to the borrowed kerchief; her artless, bewildered face

raddled with white and red, her noble head scarcely recognizable

through the bunching curls that sat so strangely each side of it--what

Pomona was this?

“Here is your kind nurse,” fluted Lady Julia. “She had a fancy to

bedizen herself for your eyes. I thought ’twould please you, my lord,

if I humored the creature.”

“Everyone is to be humored here,” thought poor Pomona, vaguely.

“Come to his lordship, child,” bade Julia, her tones tripped up with

laughter.

Pomona tottered yet a pace or two, and then halted. Taller even than

the tall Lady Julia, the lines of her generous womanhood took up the

silken skirt to absurd brevity, exposing the awkward-twisting feet.

Nymph no longer was she, but a huge painted puppet. Only the eyes were

unchanged, Pomona’s roe-deer eyes, grieving and wondering, shifting

from side to side in dumb pleading. Truly this was an excellent jest of

Lady Julia Majendie’s!

It was strange that Lady Alethea, bending closer and closer over her

work, should have no laughter left after that single glance from her

brother’s eyes; and that Lord Blantyre himself should show such lack of

humorous appreciation. There was a heavy silence. Pomona tried to draw

a breath to relieve her bursting anguish, but in vain--she was held as

in a vise. Her heart fluttered; she felt as if she must die.

“Pomona,” said Lord Blantyre, suddenly, “come closer.”

He reached and caught up his sister’s scissors from her knee, and,

leaning forward, snipped the laces that strained across the fine

scarlet satin of Pomona’s cruel bodice.

“Now breathe,” ordered he.

And while the other two were staring, unable to credit their eyes,

Pomona’s prison fell apart, and over her heaving bosom her thick white

shift took its own noble folds.

Then the woman in her awoke and revolted. She flung from her feet the

high-heeled shoes, and with frenzied hands tearing down her mockery of

a headdress, she ran to the fountain and began to dash the paint off

her face. The tears streamed down her cheeks as she laved them.

“Sweet and gentle ladies,” said the Wicked Earl--his tones cut the air

like a fine blade--“I thank you for a most excellent demonstration of

the superiority of high breeding. May I beg you both to retire upon

your triumph, and leave me to deal with this poor, inferior wretch,

since you have now most certainly convinced me she can never aspire to

such gentility as yours?”

Alethea rose, and, scattering her silks on one side, her embroidery

on the other, walked straight away down the terrace, without casting

a look behind her. Julia ran after her with skipping step, caught her

under the arm, and the laughter of her malice rang out long after she

had herself disappeared.

“Pomona,” said Lord Blantyre.

Often he had called to her, in feverish complaint, or anger, or

pettishly, like a child, but never in such a tone as this. She came to

him, as she had always come; and then she stood in shame before him,

her long hair streaming, the tears rolling down her cheeks, her hands

folded at her throat, her shapely feet gripping the ground in Julia

Majendie’s green silk stockings. Slowly his gaze enveloped her. All

at once he smiled, and then, meeting her grieving eyes, he grew grave

again, and suddenly his haughty face was broken up by tenderness. He

caught one dripping twist of hair, and pulled her toward him, after his

gentle-cruel fashion. She fell on her knees beside him and hid her face

in his cushions.

“Kiss me, Pomona,” said he.

“Oh, my lord,” she sobbed, “spare me; I am only a poor girl.”

Many a time she had dreamed, since the morning in the orchard, that she

was carrying that bleeding body, her lips on the dying roses of his

lips, but never, in her humility, had she, even in her sleep, thought

of herself as in his arms. This was no dream, and yet so he clasped her.

He bent his dark head over her radiant hair, his voice dropped words

sweeter than honey, more healing than balm, into her heart, that was

still so bruised that it could scarce beat to joy.

“When I first beheld you in the orchard, I was sorry that I might

have to die, Pomona, because you were in life. You carried me in your

arms and kept my soul from passing, by the touch of your lips. When

the fever burned me you brought me coolness--you lifted me and gave

me breath. All night you held me. Patient, strong Pomona! You bore

with all my humors. You came to me in the night from your sleep, all

in white, like an angel, your bare feet on the boards. Oh, my gentle

nurse, my humble love, my mate, my wife!”

She raised her head to gaze at him. Yet she took the wonder like a

child, not disclaiming, not questioning.

“Oh!” she said, with a deep, soft sigh.

He fondly pushed the tangled hair from her brow.

“And shall a man make shift with sham and hollow artifice when he can

possess truth itself? They put paint on your cheeks, my Pomona, and

tricked you out in gauds, and behold, I saw how great was the true

woman beside the painted doll!”

He kissed her lips, and then he cried:

“Oh, golden apple, how is the taste of thee sweet and pure!”

And, after a silence, he said to her, faintly, for he was still weak

for such rapture:

“Lift me, my love, and let me lie a while against your woman’s heart,

for never have I drawn such sweet breath as in your arms.”

THE MASTER OF THE DIDO

BY ELIZABETH DUER

[Illustration]

A certain great corporation was digging up New York and setting

microbes loose in quarters too aristocratic to suffer inconvenience

with patience, and so there were a general boarding up of front doors

and windows, a rush to Europe or to watering places; and my elders, who

were just recovering from the grip, decided that Southstrand in the

month of May was preferable to pneumonia in town. Therefore I--Kate

Russell--was sent on ahead to open my mother’s cottage at that gay

little resort, in spite of my uncle Barton Hay’s warnings against such

an unchaperoned proceeding, and mamma’s distrust of my housekeeping

powers. She was not strong enough to undertake it herself, but to

intrust the sacred rites of cleaning and unpacking to the supervision

of a girl of twenty seemed to her abnormal; while uncle Barton felt

that no unmarried woman should be given such liberty.

My uncle had condescended to live with us since my father’s death, and,

while he was too set in his ways to do anything for anybody, we were

much attached to him, and let him bully us, as most women do the one

man in the house.

“Julia,” he said, addressing my mother, “you are surely not going to

send Kate off alone to that jumping-off place, Southstrand! If some

young fellow elopes with her, you’ll have yourself to thank.”

“This is the twentieth century, Barton,” said mamma, laughing; “young

women do not elope nowadays. They may defy parents and divorce

husbands, but they don’t elope.”

“Don’t they?” snorted uncle Barton. “I say they do! When I was at

Nassau this winter, a young Englishman, without two cents to jingle on

a tombstone, eloped with old Stanbury Steel’s daughter. They borrowed

his friend Lord Battleford’s steam yacht--you must remember about

Battleford--started round the world a poor lieutenant on some English

man-of-war, and came back to find half a dozen relations dead, and a

title and fortune waiting for him. Well, as I was saying, they got him

to lend them his yacht, touched at Miami to get married, and were off

before old Steel could catch ’em. Mark my words, Julia, girls are not

to be trusted.”

This last remark switched them back to the starting point, and they

finally agreed to let me go.

The swallow that does not make summer came to us disguised as one warm

day, and mamma dispatched me on my mission, although before I could

pack and get off the weather had turned chilly, with a wind from the

east.

I was allowed a bodyguard of two servants--the most incompetent in the

house, and therefore the most easily spared: old Murphy, a preserved

supernumerary, who, having been my father’s valet, was kept on through

sentiment, and Bridget, the housemaid, also elderly and very irritable.

We reached our little, airy, seaside home at sundown--only there

wasn’t any sun--and found the fires, lighted by the women who had been

cleaning, most agreeable after a chilly drive from the station. The

wind was howling and rattling through the cracks of the window frames,

and actually made its way between the boards of the floor. There was

nothing to oppose its fury; it could sweep up uninterruptedly from the

Antilles or across from Europe, and that night it seemed to come from

both directions at once, and make whirling eddies on our south piazza.

Murphy served me a nice little repast on a tray, so that I did not

have to leave the library fire, and I amused myself with my novel till

half-past nine, and then rang the bell.

“I am going to bed, Murphy,” I said. “You may lock up.”

“Me and Bridget’s going ourselves, ma’am,” he answered.

“See that all the shutters are securely fastened,” I added. “The

cleaners left some of them open, but they should be closed such a night

as this.”

“Make yourself easy, Miss Kate,” he said, patronizingly. “Me and

Bridget knows the ways of them _weemen_.”

And so, drowsy with the narcotic of sea air, my household went to bed.

As I undressed, I heard the first splash of rain. It didn’t come

pattering like a shower, but in a wild dash against the side of the

house, as if the wind had caught the crests of all the waves and was

hurling them landward.

A line of a hymn I used to repeat to mamma in my childish days came

back to me as I laid my head on the pillow:

Guard the sailors tossing on the deep blue sea.

Truly they would need guarding that night, I reflected; but as

sentiment rarely interferes with inclination, my sympathy for the

tempest-tossed sailors did not prevent my going to sleep promptly and

remaining in that state of oblivion for hours.

About three o’clock--possibly a little earlier--I waked up with a

beating heart; some unusual noise had disturbed me, and I raised myself

on my elbow to listen. It came again--my shutter, banging like a sledge

hammer. If anyone thinks it is pleasant to get out of a warm bed to

wrestle with a recalcitrant shutter in the teeth of an Atlantic gale,

they don’t know the south shore of Long Island--that is all! I waited

for a moment, selfishly hoping Bridget might hear and come to my aid,

but Bridget was no such goose--and I got up to help myself.

As is often the case on the coast, the rain was fitful; sometimes it

came in torrents, and then for half an hour it would cease. Just now

the wind was the only aggressor, and as I stood shivering and looking

out through my shutterless window toward the sea, up through the

blackness ran a tiny trail of fire that burst into a star and fell.

Amazement was my first sensation, and then terror! A ship was drifting

on the bar and signaling for help, and perhaps I was the only living

soul who had seen it! I knew the life-saving crew were close at

hand--their station stood across the road opposite to our cottage--but

with the exception of the two men on duty, making their dreary patrol

of the beach, they were probably asleep in their beds, and those two

might be several miles to the east or the west, at the end of their

beat, while the helpless creatures on the bar sent their flashing

prayer for aid.

Hastily lighting my reading lamp, I set it in my window; that much of

comfort should be theirs--they should know that one landlubber was up

and stirring in their behalf. Next I ran to Bridget’s room and shook

her till she waked. Her irritation yielded to the excitement of the

moment, and she undertook to get Murphy up and to join me as soon as

possible.

I had come up to Southstrand well provided with warm, rough clothing,

and I dressed as rapidly and suitably as I could to go out in the

storm. Bridget, in spite of a sharp tongue, had the kind-heartedness of

her nation, and needed no second bidding to make up the kitchen fire

and unpack the blankets.

“Sure they’ll need something to warm their drownded bodies if they

come ashore,” she declared. “So have the whisky handy, Miss Kate, for

belike they’ll want it.”

I had pushed my curly mane into a tam, and buttoned a waterproof coat

over my short skirts, and I now opened the back door and went out

before Bridget realized what I meant to do. She came roaring after

me, horrified at my venturing alone into the night, but I was beyond

recall, halfway over to the life-saving station.

Trust our coast crews for good service. Except for one solitary Triton

in his sou’wester, every man of the crew was already on the beach, and

this one was only making the place snug before rushing after them. He

started when I addressed him, for I came upon him softly.

“So you knew about the vessel!” I exclaimed, standing in the doorway of

the great barn of a place where the apparatus for rescue is kept--the

boat and the life car and mortar, the breeches buoy and the life

belts--most of which was now on the beach.

The man looked at me with ill-disguised impatience.

“I want to shut that door, lady,” he said.

Evidently I had to make my choice between being squeezed flat or

getting out of the way.

In a moment he emerged through a smaller door, and began striding

toward the beach, and I, nothing daunted by his surliness, ran beside

him. We passed through a cleft between the sand dunes and over the

heavy sands of the upper beach, and as we ran my indifference to the

storm seemed to win me a reluctant esteem, for he condescended to

answer some of my questions.

He said they judged the vessel to be a small one, that she would

probably drift over the bar with the tide that had just turned to come

in, and would go to pieces near shore; that they would try to launch

the lifeboat, but he didn’t believe they would succeed in such a surf,

and he guessed they would have to shoot a line over her and use the

breeches.

I could only hear about half his words, for they were carried away by

the wind, which tore across the beach so laden with loose sand that

it lashed our faces like a whip. I thanked him for his information,

and asked his name, and then I told him mine, and tried to prove the

sincerity of my wish to help.

“I am Miss Russell, and this is my house,” I said, pointing to the

lighted windows of the cottage a few hundred feet away. “You may call

on me for blankets or bedding, or refreshment of any kind--good luck to

you, Mr. Herrick. I shall stand here and watch.”

“We’ll do all we can,” he said, shaking his head, “but the chances to

save them folks out there looks pretty poor to me.”

Here he left me, and directed his steps toward the swinging lanterns

that marked the spot where his companions were busy. They had run their

large surf boat to the edge of the waves, and were making strenuous

efforts to launch it, but in the darkness and in such a sea it was

little short of madness. Every time there was a momentary lull, the

men, with their hands grasping the gunwales, rushed waist-deep into the

water, but before they could scramble into the boat, a great roller

would drive it and them back on the beach, and they were beginning to

lose heart.

Half an hour had passed since the stranded vessel had signaled, and I

began to fear that all was over, when close--quite close--a blue light

burned, and we saw her plainly only a few hundred yards from the shore.

I was standing as near the tide line as I dared, and in my excitement

was frequently caught by the invading waves and wet to my knees--but

what do such things matter in the presence of a tragedy?

While I looked I became conscious that the figures of the life-saving

crew were dimly visible, and far across the sea a gray light crept into

the sky; the day was breaking, and one element of terror was gone.

Our men abandoned the idea of using their boat, and they drew it out

of reach of the waves, and dragged their mortar into position. By this

time it was light enough for us to see the vessel, and a sorry sight

she was. She was pointing up the coast, her bowsprit gone and her

forward mast broken about halfway down; she listed terribly to leeward,

and every third or fourth wave washed entirely over her deck. Her crew

were in the rigging of the mainmast; we thought we could make out six.

She was a little craft to have ventured upon a voyage, for no pleasure

boat would be off Southstrand at that season of the spring unless

returning from southern or European waters, and there was something in

her appearance that pronounced her a yacht even to my inexperienced

eyes.

Bang went the mortar! But in the uncertain light the aim must have

missed, for I saw the men hauling back the line and coiling it with

lightning speed. My heart beat to suffocation; I felt as if it were

tied to the end of that slender cord, and was now being dragged through

the fury of the sea.

Once more they sighted and fired, and as they stood grouped, watching

the effect, I ventured to join them. My friend Herrick had a glass, and

was reporting his observations. Out of the rigging a man swung down to

the deck--the line had evidently crossed the ship! Now came a moment

of intense excitement--would he get it before a monster wave washed

it away, or would both he and the life line be swept off before the

eyes of his comrades in the rigging? Whatever happened, he had written

himself a hero in one woman’s heart.

“He’s got it!” I heard Herrick shout, and in confirmation we could see

him climbing back on the mast, while another man seemed to be aiding

him in making the line fast. We could distinguish even distant objects

now; the day was coming on apace.

At that moment a mountainous wave struck the yacht, making her careen

so violently that the mast seemed to touch the sea, and when she

righted herself the lowest man was gone!

Without knowing it, I must have sobbed aloud, for Herrick laid a rough

hand on my shoulder.

“This ain’t no place for women,” he said, though not unkindly. “You

had better go home, Miss Russell.”

“I’ll not go home,” I answered, angrily, and then I, in my turn,

grasped his arm.

“What is that in that wave?” I almost screamed, and he answered, with

an oath I dare not set down:

“It’s a man!”

Most of the life-saving men were busy paying out the heavy line that

was to support the breeches buoy to and from the sinking ship, but one

young fellow heard Herrick’s shout, and followed him to the edge of the

waves. They were already in their cork belts, and Herrick now fastened

a rope round his waist and gave the coil to his companion as he waited

for the incoming surge. The two stood like a pair of leashed greyhounds

prepared to spring.

On came the roller--not a wall of water, like many that had preceded

it, but low, swift and sweeping, with a nasty side twist--and in its

foam, sometimes tossed high, sometimes hidden in the spray, came its

human burden.

Herrick ran forward to meet the wave, and plunged under as it broke,

while we on shore watched with throbbing hearts his game with death. It

seemed an even chance whether he would snatch his prey from the sea, or

be trampled himself in its cruel pounding. The agony of the moment made

it seem interminable, and I think I must have lost consciousness, for

I found myself on the sands with my head against the lifeboat, and, a

hundred feet away, Herrick and the man he had saved were stretched side

by side.

I never saw anything as humanly perfect as that sailor. He was a young

man--decidedly under thirty--with the regularity of feature we usually

consider Greek, and a look of repose beautiful to behold. Dignity,

tenderness and a soft languor all mingled in the expression of his face.

I could not believe that he was dead, such a little time had elapsed

since he had been swept from the vessel, and I knelt beside him and

began to rub his cold hands between my own.

The hands were good--too good for a seafaring man, and with feminine

precipitance I jumped to the conclusion that this beautiful,

fair-haired Viking was the owner of the yacht, and no sooner had this

idea entered my mind than romance was busy weaving a web round my

heart. The lower part of his face was bronzed by exposure, but the

forehead was white as a child’s, and above it the short hair grew low,

and ruffled itself in little rings as the water dripped from it. I

knew if ever the eyes met mine they would be blue, and I gazed as if

the force of my will could compel them to disclose their secret to me.

Perhaps it did--for suddenly the lids trembled, then opened, and a

pair of blue-gray eyes looked sternly in my face. The expression was

defiant, as if the spirit had been braced to meet danger, but in a

second the hard look vanished, and the eyes seemed to smile before they

slowly shut, as if the effort had cost all remaining vitality.

Herrick’s companion was just starting to run for help when that

redoubtable person sat up and then staggered to his feet. He had only

had the wind knocked out of him, and was his own sturdy self in a few

minutes, with a wealth of invectives that broke rudely upon my exalted

mood. He called to his companion to get to work if he didn’t want the

man to die on their hands, and added, crossly:

“We can’t do anything here with a woman lookin’ on. Just carry him over

to the station, and we’ll cut these wet clothes off him and give him a

show at the fire, and I guess he’ll pull round all right.”

They hoisted him over the shoulder of the younger man, and bore him

off, leaving me humiliated by my disabilities for usefulness. I stood

rooted to the spot where I had knelt beside the sailor, a flood of

pity and admiration filling my heart, and a passionate wondering

whether life or death were to be the portion of the man whose beauty

and courage had so moved me. Herrick’s rough kindness seemed to me

sacrilege.

In the meantime the breeches buoy had made one trip and landed its

first passenger, a monkey-like old sailor with gold earrings and black

whiskers surrounding his flat face. He spat the salt water from his

mouth, and with as little concern as if he were furling a sail he lent

a hand to the coast crew in their work of rescue.

I approached the group to repeat the offer I had already made to

Herrick of fire and refreshment at my cottage, and overheard the old

fellow’s replies to certain questions our men put to him concerning the

yacht and the man who had been washed overboard.

“That was our captain,” he said. “I’ve sailed with worse--durned sight

worse! Got him, did you? Name is Holford--yacht _Dido_--coming from

Nassau by way of Bermuda--here she comes!”

This last was in reference to the breeches, which was freighted for the

second time.

The wind was going down as the day advanced, and the waves seemed less

vicious. To my shame, I found my interest in the rescue of my fellow

creatures had dwindled since the Viking had been borne off, and I

became keenly aware of my bodily discomfort. I was wet to the skin

and exhausted to the last degree, and hardly had the strength to drag

myself home. Before going to my room, however, I dispatched Murphy over

to the station with blankets and hot coffee, together with a bottle

of whisky, and I charged Bridget to let me know his report of Captain

Holford.

It was a long time before she brought me any news, and then it was

interspersed with characteristic scoldings.

“Why didn’t I come before? Glory be to goodness, this day and this

night, child. How can I be everywhere at once? People running in for

hot drinks, and half-drowned creatures sopping the kitchen with sea

water; it’s half dead I am! The captain of the ship? Well, Murphy says

he’s alive, but he guesses he’s hurt internal, and the doctor’s been

and taken him over to that little house across the field, where he can

be more quiet and have a room to himself. You drink this hot tea, Miss

Kate, and get into your bed, if you don’t want to be sick after this

night’s work.”

She set down the tea and walked off, disapprobation expressed in every

line of her retreating figure. When she reached the stairs I heard her

mutter:

“Young ladies running out with the men in the middle of the night.

’Tain’t my idea of manners, and I guess it won’t be Mrs. Russell’s

either, when I tell her what Miss Kate’s been up to.”

If I had been a boy I should have said something forcible to Bridget.

* * * * *

A severe cold kept me in my room for two days, and made me humble

enough to swallow Bridget’s nostrums as well as her reproaches, for the

dread that she might send for my mother and put an end to future free

action on my part held me enslaved.

The gale blew itself out, and nature remembered that the month was May.

May at Southstrand meant buttercups as large as daisies, and, in the

woods, clustering masses of pink azaleas. The beach grass on the dunes

waved silver in the south wind, the fields and meadows intensified

their spring freshness by a cunning shading of velvet greens, and the

blue of the sky melted into the sea.

During the hours of my imprisonment I had thought but one thought, seen

but one vision--the face of my sailor captain as he lay on the beach,

and I asked myself how I dared to thus idealize a stranger. Not for

a second did I doubt his place in life. Class prejudice was mine to

an overmastering extent, but I told myself that such beauty of body

could only be the home of what I was pleased to call _the soul of a

gentleman_. For narrowness of vision commend me to that which has only

seen life through plate-glass windows and lace curtains. Thanks to a

new influence, mine broadened and matured with the ripening summer.

The morning of the third day I ventured out, and naturally directed

my steps to the life-saving station to ask news of the yacht’s crew.

Herrick was just outside with his bicycle, prepared to skim off to the

village to spend his leisure hours with his family, but he courteously

waited to greet me and answer my questions.

The rescued men had been sent to New York. The captain had attended to

that, for, while he was unable to be moved just yet owing to injuries

he had received, he was able to give his orders and see that they were

carried out.

“Doesn’t he mourn the wreck of his yacht?” I asked, and Herrick

answered:

“Lor’, miss! ’Tain’t nothin’ to him; he’s only the sailing master. The

_Dido’s_ owned by a rich man, who is off on his wedding trip, and sent

the yacht home from Nassau with this young fellow.”

Only the sailing master! My lips kept whispering it, and my brain would

not take it in. It meant that I--Katherine Russell, the fastidious

daughter of tradition, of all exclusiveness--had fallen in love with

a sailing master, and, what was far worse, I had fallen in love

unsolicited. What would my mother say--and uncle Barton? Uncle Barton,

who was always rolling that magic word, “gentleman,” under his tongue,

and despising others. Of course they need never know, but my secret

hurt me.

Desperate diseases require desperate remedies, and as I walked along

the lanes in a passion of rage at my own weakness, I determined to see

this man and let him destroy his own image in my heart. I was in love

with a creature of my own creation--I knew neither his mind nor his

speech--perhaps his first words would dispel the illusion and set me

free.

Across the field was the little house that harbored him, open doored

and cheerful in the sunshine, and I boldly turned my face thither.

As I approached, the farmer’s wife came out of her henhouse with her

apron full of fresh eggs, and I affected to wish to buy some for my

housekeeping, and strolled with her to the porch.

“I’ll put them in a basket for you, Miss Russell,” she said, pausing.

“I am sorry I cannot ask you inside to wait, but my parlor is let to

the captain of that wrecked vessel, and he’s still too sick to leave

his bed.”

As she spoke a towering figure filled the doorway and a deep voice said:

“Oh, no, he isn’t, Mrs. Price, for here he is, and hungry enough to beg

for one of those eggs for a second breakfast.”

He was dressed in a blue flannel shirt, such as the village shops

furnished, a pair of dark trousers, also village made, and a coat which

must have been lent to him by the farmer: and he wore them with an air

that was regal.

Now that I was face to face with my folly, I recovered my senses, and,

while I felt puzzled by the contradictions he presented, I was brave

enough to take advantage of opportunity.

“You must allow me to congratulate you upon your rescue and that of

your crew, Mr. Holford,” I said. “You had a narrow escape.”

“The congratulations are due to the gallantry of your coast guards,” he

answered, with enthusiasm.

“I am sorry about the yacht,” I continued; “she is still holding

together, for one mast thrusts itself out of the water at low tide and

looks so pathetic.”

“A monument to bad seamanship,” he said, impatiently. “It is the last

boat I shall ever attempt to sail.”

“But isn’t sailing your occupation?” I asked, aghast at his easy way of

laying down his livelihood. “There must be plenty of gentlemen needing

sailing masters, even if this one especial yacht has gone to the

bottom.”

He stared at me blankly, and then a quizzical look came into his eyes,

as he answered:

“Few gentlemen care to employ an unsuccessful sailing master; indeed, I

am not sure but that my license will be revoked. No, no, the ocean has

thrown me upon the land, and I mean to take the hint.”

“It seems hard to begin life all over again,” I said, sympathetically.

He impressed me as a man gently nurtured, who had adopted a profession

for which he was not originally intended.

“You mustn’t waste too much compassion on me,” he replied. “I have

no one dependent upon me, and, besides, I am not at the end of my

resources. I possess a few acres of farm land. There is nothing to

prevent my turning myself into a son of the soil.”

At this juncture Mrs. Price came back with the eggs, and I turned to

go, feeling the conversation was becoming almost too personal.

“Good-by,” I said. “I am glad you are better. Is there anything I can

do for you?”

He came painfully after me down the path; the muscles of his back had

been hurt and he moved stiffly.

“Two things if you will,” he said, with rather a saucy smile: “tell me

where I have seen you before, and lend me some books.”

This was getting on a little too fast. If he had been my social equal,

if we had possessed friends in common, he could not have been more

assured in his manner.

“I have never spoken to you before in my life,” I said, coldly. “I will

send you some books, Mr. Holford.”

Again the merriment flashed into his eyes, and he stood in my path.

“You would prefer me with manners cold as my hands were the other day

when you chafed them for me on the beach. You see, I remember--and I

prefer you with a red Tam o’ Shanter on your curly locks. Oh, don’t

be vexed!” he added, with entreaty in his voice. “I do not mean to be

impertinent, but I have been haunted by a vision, and the impression is

intensified by reality.” He drew aside to let me pass, and I hurried

down the path, more in love with this impudent, outrageous stranger

than before.

I sent Murphy with the books; a choice collection of direct

narratives--Conan Doyle, Clark Russell stories, that I considered

suited to a taste more practical than scholarly--but as an

afterthought I added a novel I had just read, a psychological problem

as to one’s right to dispose of life in the manner to give the richest

fulfillment to present desires at the expense of future wreck or death.

I was thoroughly disingenuous with myself, for my only object in

sending that book was to mark its effect, to welcome its discussion,

and yet I pretended I never wished to see Mr. Holford again.

* * * * *

Perhaps it was not altogether my fault that we met every day, and

sometimes twice a day, in that week allotted to his recovery. If I

strolled up the beach when my house duties were over, I was sure to be

waylaid by Mr. Holford on my return, and he leaned so heavily on his

cane, and entreated me so earnestly to sit down for a moment and rest,

that common humanity made me accede to his request.

I had a shrewd suspicion that Bridget was always dogging my footsteps,

and once or twice I surprised a flitting figure disappearing round

the piazza when Captain Holford walked home with me, but as she never

ventured to remonstrate openly, I did not suppose she would presume to

write about me to mamma.

This went on for six glorious days, and we talked of everything on

earth, and even exchanged views of the trans-celestial, and the rest

of the time we talked of ourselves, and again of ourselves. He drew

from me my thoughts and hopes, the monotonous story of a sheltered

girl’s life, and the shrinking and longing--so oddly mixed--with which

she viewed the impending future; and in return he talked much of his

feelings, but little of his past, though vaguely I guessed that a great

financial change had come to him not very long ago, and I understood

how painful explanations might be, and admired his uncomplaining

courage.

At our last meeting, for he was going away the next day, we discussed

that burning question of what an enlightened conscience owes to

others--to prejudice and class distinction as against its larger

usefulness and happiness.

We were seated near the top of a sand dune with the Atlantic murmuring

at our feet, and behind us the merry little village settling down to

rest after the labors of the day. Mr. Holford had been talking of

youth, its sensuous keenness to pain or pleasure, and saying that

worldly prudence meant sacrificing life at its flood of physical

development to the dreary protection of its decay.

“We must go hungry,” he concluded, disdainfully, “while we have the

teeth to eat, in order that our mumbling old age may be regaled with

banquets it is past enjoying.”

His reasoning seemed to me fallacious.

“If youth is restrained,” I said, “it is only in the cause of

self-respect. What civilized being wishes to be a burden to others?”

“Civilization means hardened selfishness,” he said. “It conjugates all

its tenses with _to have_, seldom with _to be_.”

I asked myself whether this bitterness was a protest against the social

barrier between us, and I said, reproachfully:

“I don’t like you in this mood. You are hard.”

“The sordid side of life has been thrust upon me,” he said, sadly. “I

have known poverty and riches, and I have suffered almost as much from

one as the other, till I hate such influences. Why, even you--a girl of

twenty--would deny your best impulses if you fell in love with a man

below you in position. Look into my eyes and tell me if I have guessed

the truth?”

I looked into his eyes and saw something that made the color mount to

my cheeks and set my heart thumping.

“A girl doesn’t own her own life, Mr. Holford,” I managed to answer.

“She only owns a little part of herself called her heart, and that

seems of small consequence to her elders.”

“Her elders!” he repeated, scornfully. “There spoke the conventional

girl. We will not talk in quibbles any longer. I love you. I am an

honorable man, and therefore worthy of the woman I love. I can support

you in decent comfort. Will you marry me?”

He held out that handsome brown hand to me, and I put mine in it.

“I will love you,” I said, “because I cannot help myself, but I will

not marry you without my mother’s consent, because it would make me

miserable. You have loved me in spite of my classbound education, now

win me openly and honorably or go your way.”

I sprang to my feet, meaning to leave him, but he caught my frock like

a naughty child, and held me while he scrambled painfully to his feet.

“God bless you, Kate,” he said, “you are right, as usual. As long as

you love me for my very self, it makes little difference that your

mother may probably accept me for a different reason. Tell me once more

that you love the poor sailing master of the _Dido_--that if left to

yourself, you would share his fortunes, no matter how humble--and then

I will tell you the truth.”

And I told him; indeed, it was sweet to make the confession, with no

one to share it but the crickets in the beach grass, and a belated bird

calling to her mate, and when I had satisfied his craving to be loved,

I claimed his promise.

“Now what have you to tell me?” I demanded, for he had stung my woman’s

curiosity.

“Only that Holford is no longer my name,” he said, smiling; “at least

only a part of it. Several years ago, by a strange turn of fortune,

I----”

He stopped abruptly, for mamma appeared on the top of the sand hill and

fluttered down upon us like an avenging angel.

“Kate!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here? And who is this person

with whom you are on such intimate terms that he holds your hands while

he talks to you? My daughter seems unable to answer me,” she continued,

turning to my lover; “perhaps you will favor me with some account of

yourself?”

“With pleasure,” he said, his eyes dancing wickedly. “Miss Russell

could not tell you my name because she doesn’t know it herself. I

am----”

And here he was again interrupted by uncle Barton sliding down the sand

hill and landing heavily.

“Great Scott!” he grumbled, “I’ve a ton of sand in each shoe! I hope

I did not hurt you, sir--why, can it be? What the devil are you doing

here, Battleford? Do you know my sister, Mrs. Russell? This is Lord

Battleford, Julia, whom I met at Nassau.”

At this point his wits revealed to him that Lord Battleford was the

castaway sailor whose attentions to me had alarmed Bridget into writing

to my mother for help, and he turned upon the young gentleman with

rancor.

“You don’t seem to need any introduction to my niece, Lord Battleford,”

he said, loftily, while his face flushed with turkey-cock rage, “and

I beg to inform you that I think it a deuced ungentlemanlike thing

on your part to compromise a girl with clandestine meetings and

flirtations in the absence of her family, and I tell you plainly the

whole thing has got to stop.”

“Not so fast, if you please, Mr. Hay,” said my sailor, laughing. “I

have won a wife who likes me for what I _am_ irrespective of what I

_have_, and I hope you and Mrs. Russell are not going to spoil our

romance by refusing your consent. Speak up, Kate,” he said, turning

to me; “tell these discreet people that I am something better than a

title--a man you have learned to love.”

And so I had to make a second confession of the state of my heart, and

mamma succumbed in two minutes to Battleford’s charms--or those of his

title--but I heard Uncle Barton still scolding as he helped her up the

sand dune.

“Oh, yes, he’ll make a she-earl of Kate--countess, I mean--but he’ll

take her away from us, and I fancy you will yet regret the day you

trusted her out of your sight, when the ocean lies between us and our

little girl.”

But she didn’t! For in giving me to Battleford she not only had me

often with her, but gained the dearest of sons.

MRS. EVREMOND

By

Mrs. John Van Vorst

& Marie Van Vorst

[Illustration]

When Mrs. Evremond found herself actually in her carriage it seemed

to her that it would never go fast enough, although Heaven knows she

was indifferent to the speed of her vehicles as a rule, there being

no reason why she should hasten--no place she especially cared to

arrive at, no excitement or element of it in her quiet life. But this

afternoon she was conscious of every rotation of the wheels.

When the Arc de Triomphe had been passed and in and out among

automobiles and tramways her little yellow-wheeled brougham crossed

the Etoile and began the descent, suddenly, with the inconsequence

marking a woman’s emotions as clearly as it stamps her reasonings,

Mrs. Evremond decided the coachman was driving at a ridiculous rate.

After all, she hoped never to reach the Place de la Concorde--never to

traverse the Pont Royal and leave for the Latin Quarter and the other

side of the river--the _insouciant_ world of the Bois and American

Paris. She had no desire to find the obscure street in which her

husband had his studio--which street was, however, the direction she

had given her footman, and it was toward No. 15 bis, Passage du Maine,

that with such useless speed she was being driven.

They reached and passed the Elysée Palace Hotel. Mrs. Evremond blew

through the tube at her side, the brougham drew up to the curb, stopped

and she got out.

“You may go home. I shall not need you again to-day,” she directed,

and, turning to the avenue, she began to walk down the Champs

Elysées. She might at least be mistress of her own gait; walk with

short, feverish little steps or retard her pace to keep harmony

with her alternate rapid or halting reflections, for her mind, as

she walked, went back over the past six months of her married life

with a persistence, a clearness, that denoted how important were the

details, how ineffaceable were the marks her experiences had made

upon her, how intensely she felt what she had lived, how seriously

she had taken life, how absorbed she was in the man to whom she had

attached herself--how desperately she loved her husband. The vividness

with which she thought of him had the precision of a fresh image. The

impulsive rush of herself toward the harbor her conception of him made

proved, by its very force and freshness, that thinking of him like this

was a new thing. She had lived with him, existed by his side, for six

years, and had never thought about him, around him, as she did to-day.

She gasped. “Perhaps if I had thought about him a little more and loved

him a little less, _this_ might not have happened!”

The happening, so distressing to her, which had caused her, at an

unusual hour, to ring for her carriage, dress and fly from the house on

an expedition she knew to be close to ill-breeding in its likeness to

melodrama and its distinct opposition to codes of expedient, had been

finding a letter--the world-worn story that comes to each woman with a

new pang.

As Mrs. Evremond reached the Rond Point, she asked herself: “What am I

really going to do? What do I expect to see and find, and how shall I

act when I find it?”

Women constantly commit the platitude--if such an expression can be

used--of thinking they are acting on certain occasions contrary to

their characters, out of gear with their codes. Mrs. Evremond was not

an impulsive temperament. Unaccustomed to crises or events that called

for the quick decision of more brilliant and self-sufficient minds, she

had found herself face to face with a problem, and was acting with a

precipitation that made her dizzy, and a promptitude that suggested she

had been brought into contact with just such difficulties many times

before.

The well-bred gentlewoman had seized, without second thought, the

letter lying open at her feet, read it, gasped over it, paled over it,

hated and disbelieved it--crushed it in her hand, and, with the now

crumpled sheet between glove and palm, she was on her way to verify its

purport; to make sure of the fact which women, if they would but know

it, are many times happier in ignoring; to prove to herself what? That

her husband was unfaithful to her; that she must either “cease to love

him”--by the operation of one of those unbalancing _coups de foudre_

which, we are told, turn honey to gall and love to hate in the human

breast at one revolution--or that with the discovery she must also

acknowledge, no matter _what_ he did, she would love him still, and

would, therefore, curse an enlightenment which should only give her a

useless bitter grief to suffer for the rest of her life.

She stopped still at the Place de la Concorde. She never walked alone

in the streets of Paris at this hour, and the aspect of the city was

new to her. In the early winter twilight the Place shone through the

mingled mists of evening, and the golden hazy scintillations haloing

the yellow lamps. The sunset had left the sky over the Tuileries still

red, and above the river the heavens darkened and grew cold, but the

bridge lights beckoned. Her hands were in her muff, her cheeks red

with exercise, and her eyes, which had wept more tears in the last

few hours than they would acknowledge to have seen for many months,

stung in the sharp air. She stood irresolute. Behind her the Champs

Elysées stretched to the apex at the Arc. It would be a quiet, restful

walk home. Should she not take it, return and force herself to learn

the lesson--that it is folly to be too wise? As she clasped her

hands together in her muff the letter crushed upon her palm; she set

her lips, drew a sharp breath, and resumed her walk, turning across

to the Pont de la Concorde, traversing it quickly, a graceful, agile

pedestrian among the many foot passengers, unobserving of the admiring

eyes of those whose chase is beauty.

After a very long walk, Mrs. Evremond gained the boulevard she sought,

turned into a dark little street, into a still darker alley.

The old _concierge_ met her at the _loge_, a peasant _gardienne_,

blear-eyed and wearing the white cap of her province. She blinked at

madame, and under the thick lace veil Mrs. Evremond had worn to shield

her emotion from the curious, the old woman did not recognize her

tenant’s wife.

“Monsieur told me that he is expecting madame,” she said, familiarly.

“He will not be long. Madame will go in----”

Without reply, she passed the woman and went up to her husband’s room.

Expecting her? No, that she knew was not the case--he was expecting

another; even the old _portière_ was in his wretched secret, while she

alone, perhaps, of all Paris had been ignorant.

As she crossed the threshold of the studio she seemed to enter the

apartment of a perfect stranger, so far away from her the last few

hours had served to put him. The room was cold. She opened the door

of the little stove, and, finding the fire laid, put a match to the

kindling; in a moment the sharp crackling of the wood met her ears with

a friendly domestic voice whose language was to her ears cruelly that

of the hearth and home. If what the missive implied were true, her

husband had loved another woman for many months. He had met her here

in this place which the wife looked upon as sacred to his art; whose

precincts she had respected with fidelity, believing them devoted to

his work, and fearing to be obtrusive.

The studio had indeed been sacred, but to an unlawful love.

Her first impulse was to throw her muff down, unwind the fur from her

neck and make herself as comfortable as she could in the gloom of the

spacious room; but instead she walked restlessly about, taking in the

details of decoration, the attractive disorder, with unseeing eyes.

Behind that large screen Maurice’s models dressed and undressed--women

of the people, women of the streets, of course, of the lowest, most

degrading type; face to face with them, alone with them, he had passed

hours of his life with them for years. She had never been jealous of

them, she had never thought of them; she had regarded them in the same

light with easels, and paint, and studio equipment.

Why had she not been jealous of them? They were women, and if Maurice

was so unattached that he was either a prey or a victim, or a seeker

of such affairs as this which she now believed she had discovered,

why should she not take it for granted that there were many and

varied experiences of which she had been the unconscious dupe? She

shuddered--anger and distrust whispered her to hate her husband, to

despise his weakness and never to forgive him.

In her lonely promenade she peopled the room with incidents and scenes

which did her wrong, and proved to what extent she had unnerved

herself, what rein she gave to jealousy and fear. She had lighted

a lamp, and in its light took out the crumpled piece of paper from

her glove and re-read it again. It was a love letter, the warm and

confident letter of a woman who loves to the man who loves her. At its

close it gave him rendezvous for half-past five o’clock at 11 bis,

Passage du Maine.

As Mrs. Evremond’s eyes followed the lines among the wrinkles of the

crumpled page, her eyes brimmed over again with tears, her knees

trembled, she felt herself actually ready to fall. With the return

of her tears came a softening of her anger--a relief of her unnerved

state, of her suffering--for a second she wept silently. At the moment

when her control was beyond her power she thought she heard a sound on

the stairway, and her heart stopped beating very nearly--the blood

flew to her face.

A sense of shame overcame her--shame for herself, for him and for the

other woman. What a horrible thing to follow and spy upon her husband!

What scene did she meditate? What tirade should spring to her lips? It

showed, indeed--the fact of her presence--how degrading was the whole

matter, if it could bring her to this. And the woman who bravely had

come all the way from her home to find out what she dreaded, now that

enlightenment was at hand, longed to run from it, and wished herself a

thousand miles away. _If it were true, she would rather die than know._

If it were not true, how she would loathe herself for her presence here!

The steps ceased, and in the consoling silence Mrs. Evremond regained

her natural balance--and swung true. She turned from the table near

which she had been standing, and more hurriedly than she had entered

left the studio--almost ran past the _loge_ of the old _concierge_, and

unseen by her slipped out of the open gate, called a passing cab and

crept into it, guiltily, closing the door upon what she felt was her

dishonor.

* * * * *

Whereas Mrs. Evremond’s life was made up of monologue reflection, of

days of solitude and lately of lonely evenings, Mr. Evremond was seldom

alone. Weariness and ennui possessed him as soon as he was face to face

with his thoughts in solitude, and he, therefore, arranged his life, in

as much as possible, to avoid his ego, which, for some reason or other,

he cared never to entertain _en tête-à-tête_!

He gave rendezvous for the morning hours to his men friends, so that

even while he painted he was attended by one or another of a dozen

intimates, who amused and diverted him. When these failed, he would

even call in the curtain hanger or a carpenter for some impromptu

task, and the necessity of sharing the burden of his personality he

attributed to his sociability. It was innocent enough that the mere

noise of a carpenter’s plane, the tap, tap, of an upholsterer’s

hammer, should be company to him, yet this need of another’s presence

had been the demoralization of his character. So long as there was

somebody with him, he put off the moment of reckoning with himself, the

salutary confession productive of the efforts which count in a man’s

life. And so the inward voice of conscience had been drowned by the

voice of human companions.

Evremond was pleased with the world and disgusted with himself. Good

health and a love of beauty caused him perpetual enjoyment, whereas

his moral insensibility, the deadening of his ego, deprived him of all

happiness. He had too long stifled his yawns with a smile to be capable

now of tears or laughter, and his attitude was a menace to his wife’s

contentment. In the best hours of Mrs. Evremond’s married life, she had

felt between her husband and herself that breach of solitude which, no

matter by whom, _must be filled_.

She was six years younger than her husband, whom, without knowing, she

loved passionately and timidly. Silent as he was, indifferent, as a

rule, and always preoccupied, nevertheless he depended upon her. She

was the blank page at the end of a book, the instant’s repose for the

emotions--she was a habit--she was his wife.

Evremond was at the close of an affair; on his part, an affair not

of business, but of the heart. For the past three months he had made

desperate love to a woman not his wife. She had denied him nothing. And

now it was over. Their meetings had taken place at her house and his

own studio, he had seen her in her own boudoir, he had driven with her

in the broad light of day through hidden alleys in the Bois. They had

made sentimental journeys to the Louvre. Together they had sat in the

public gardens of the Tuileries. For three long months they had amused

themselves and each other. And now the affair was ended. Evremond

was ready to yawn upon it already. Already the memory was becoming

indistinct, blent with memories of other adventures so like to this

one that it would require a useless effort to distinguish it. But this

time there was something different in the ending of the romance, the

happy ending reserved for sensitive readers.

This afternoon at five they had met and parted in his studio, a

sundering of friendship by mutual consent, with adieux into which

both had tried to put feeling enough to justify the hours they had

consecrated to each other.

After she had gone he lingered in the familiar room. A long glass

screen reflected the dying embers that had fallen red against the iron

hearth of the stove. A certain perfume brought with a rush to his mind

moments that now became intolerable to him. As he impatiently put the

scenes from him, between the stove and the mirror, the mirror in which

Evremond could not, try as he would, imagine himself alone, he saw a

small gray spot on the polished floor. A handkerchief--no, a glove! He

stooped, picked it up, and, as though in defiance of the bolder odors

of heavier scent that hung in the air, a faint breath like an appeal

came from the bit of _suède_ which held still the imprint of a woman’s

hand. His heart seemed to stop as he turned the object over in his

hand. It was a small gray glove, distinctly not the property of the

woman to whom he had said good-by.

He picked it up and smoothed it out; there was something in it--a bit

of crumpled paper over whose ruffled surface ran the words of love and

the appeal which had brought him to his last rendezvous. He could not

believe his eyes! This was his wife’s glove! It meant, then, that she

had found the letter which he had evidently carelessly let fall, and

she had read the ridiculous sheet of paper whose words and expressions

gave him now a sort of wearied nausea. She had come to the studio

to confirm her doubts, she had seen them enter together, of course.

She knew everything, then, everything--everything except that it was

over--all that should never have been was ended. But that would not

clear him in her eyes.

Much disturbed and sick at heart, he went out into the streets and

walked slowly along, somewhat like a man in a dream, lighting one

cigarette after another, following, as it were, the leading of the tiny

light that faded and glowed at the end of the paper cylinder. He walked

on until the small house in which he lived near the Avenue du Bois was

not more than fifteen minutes distant, then he wandered away from it,

his thoughts following an irregular route.

* * * * *

As Mrs. Evremond got into her cab without giving an address, the

coachman waited for a second, then leaned down from his box and asked

her where he should drive her.

Home--she had none! Why, the term was a farce! It had meant a place

shared by her husband and herself--he had dishonored it, blighted it

forever in her eyes. She would go at once to her mother’s, and from

there write him her conditions--they were hers to make, she knew--he

would not put forth any plea; she would never see him again.

She gave the coachman an address in Passy, and the speaking of the

number and street out into the dark put finality to what she did. He

received it with a “_Bien, madame_,” as casual and cheerful as if she

had given him a point of happy meeting instead of neutral ground on

which to decide for misery. She sank back in the _fiacre_, white and

shaking, and watched the lights of the interminable streets mark her

as she passed, and the unconcerned passersby, whom she envied in their

apparent freedom from an hour of agony.

She had been betrayed; horribly, cruelly, disloyally left for another

woman. At first the jealous bitterness of it obscured all other

feeling. She was only conscious of a desire to escape--to put miles

between herself and her husband and to be free. He had then not loved

her for long, and she had believed herself cherished. Now she believed

she had only been uneasily watched. No doubt, even the few occasions

on which he had showed her marked affection--notably after some

unintended indifference on her part--were to be attributed to his

uneasiness, to the assuaging of his conscience. That to such caresses

she had been dupe was a fatal obstacle to any reconciliation.

It was her hour to choose between her rights as a wife and her divine

right as a woman, and as she mused, hidden in the corner of the little,

rattling carriage, Mrs. Evremond saw only the first. The reality from

which she was fleeing brought its flood of indignant shame to her face,

and she began to despise the ignorance which had placed her in the way

of being so easily deceived. She scorned her trust in her husband, and

the beautiful qualities of confidence and belief grew to appear as the

most pitiable dupes--a rage of humiliation filled her as she realized

her blindness during the most poignant moments of her husband’s

treachery. Her constancy, her very loyal love, made her pitifully

ridiculous in her own eyes.

That a man’s betrayal has power to waken such heat of passion and

base humiliation as this in a gentle breast is too unfortunately the

case. Evremond’s excuses for tardy entrances, his evading of little

attentions to herself which would have involved the devotion of several

hours, how puerile and trifling they seemed!--how bald and flagrant

they appeared to her illumined understanding! Worst of all it was to

feel that whatever love she had innocently shown her husband during

these few months had for him no value; had only served to assure him

that his wife was suspicionless--at ease; that she was successfully

duped, and he might more fearlessly continue on his way. She would set

him free--leave him to love whatever woman he chose without the sin of

a dishonored vow. He would be at liberty--there would be no trace of

her left in his life. And for herself? What would it mean for her? She

must well think of it now.

With the completeness a supreme moment of grief alone is capable to

accomplish, she saw in a flash her past filled with Maurice and her

future without him. With an audible cry, quickly stifled, she leaned

forward in the little vehicle, and stretched her hands before her as if

she would seize the first, then shrank back, covering her face as if

she would shut out the latter.

“I don’t believe he loves her more than me!” she cried, to her wounded

soul. “I don’t _believe_ it; there is something in me still that tells

me he cares for me--and there is _nothing_ in me to tell me that I do

not love my husband--nothing to help me to take the stand of pride and

jealousy. I love him--and I always shall.”

Ah, she loved him! There was no doubt about that. And how deeply

inevitably it shamed her now to acknowledge it. Her history is the

repetition of many a woman’s, and of women less one-minded, less

unselfish, more warped by petty jealousies, whose frequency has become

habit. But this, the first jealous hour of Mrs. Evremond’s life, was

met by a storm of love, in which it was beaten down to the ground as,

with a rush, came over her the accumulated tenderness of years, never

checked, spontaneously allowed to live in her heart, if never shown

to her husband. Instantly purged by its holiness--spiritualized by

its unselfishness--she began to wonder if the fault did not lie with

herself.

“It is never one-sided,” she thought. “He really loved me very much

once--why should he stop loving me? If I have not been able to keep my

husband’s love, part, at least, of the fault must be mine?”

It is rare that when a height is reached, after a painful climb, that

the vision is dimmed; the reward of the struggle is sight. Whether or

not she fatuously blamed herself, whether or not a stronger-minded

woman, zealous for her rights and keen to the sense of hurt honor,

would be able to detect _any_ fault in the years of the gentle life,

the wife, examining herself, believed she saw clear.

She had too readily accepted as a matter of course the idea that

devotion promised at the altar is a commodity given over in sacred

form and secure from all assaults; hers without future effort. She

had slipped into married life too easily, too calmly, and now she

thought stupidly, without varying, or seeking to amuse, distract

or entertain--without eternally charming the man whom she had once

charmed. For her restless and vacillating husband--he was this in her

eyes as she mused--she had discovered nothing new in six years. She

was a fixture to him--an article of furniture, one with the home,

indispensable perhaps as the home itself, but only because, like

inanimate things, she had been useful and had made no claim. If she now

sought him in judicial manner and demanded confession, renunciation,

and all the rest of it, what power remained with her still? Having

brought her this far in her musings, the _fiacre_ drove up and stopped.

Looking out she saw the _grille_ and the iron lamps hanging lit on

either side the posts of the gate, and back of it the garden and her

mother’s home. But the sight of this destination brought only a chill

to her and no comfort. It was no welcome asylum; she had no desire to

fly to her mother’s arms, to weep and pour out her grief. She felt no

need of a confidant. She wanted to find some basis of her unchanged

loyalty to rest upon--a natural resting place--some strength to take

her to her own door.

Her grief, her contemplation of the disaster to her faith in her

husband, had left her shaken in all but her love. She loved him, and

any life without him was intolerable for her to face. “But,” she

reflected, “however much I may prefer a future with him to no matter

what life without him, it does not follow that he would decide in the

same way.” Yet for some intangible reason she believed it.

She had arrived at the hour which presents itself sooner or later in

the life of every married woman, the hour of combat whose issue decides

the limit for all future relations.

If she should go to him to-night--wounded vanity recalcitrant--she

might stipulate conditions that should forever sunder their lives.

Sunder their lives she believed for a passing fantasy, for a weakness,

for a caprice on his part. If, on the contrary, she went to him with

forgiveness, the very fact that there _was_ such need, that he was

forced to receive it, would leave a scar. It requires more grace to

forget forgiveness than to forgive. She knew her husband’s nature--it

would rankle and corrode. She shrank from the ordeal of an explanation,

of any rôle that would link her with this _liaison_.

At all events, descent here at the friendly home was impossible. She

gave her own address, Rue Leonard de Vinci, and directed a return

through the Bois de Boulogne. The coachman, thinking he was driving

a disappointed lady from a _rendezvous manqué_, said: “_Très bien,

madame!_” with less cheerfulness than he had shown at the first

instructions. Turning briskly through Passy to La Muette, and entering

the Bois at that gate, he drove her along at a jogging pace toward

home. Home--it had become this once again; not as yet destroyed and

marred by torturing questions and recriminations--never, please God, so

to be by her! If it had any sacredness, she would try to save it still;

if the link were not too fragile, she would mend it; if there were a

hearthstone left she would, if she might, kindle some warmth upon it

still.

“Perhaps,” she mused, “happiness is ended for my husband and me; at all

events, I will not seek its destruction. Perhaps he wants to leave me

and be free. He must prove it to me. He has not proved it yet. Perhaps

I can learn to be to him more than any other woman can ever be--can

charm him to me again as I did when I was a girl. I can try with all my

heart.”

She let down the glass of the little window and leaned out. The air

was sweet with the smell of the damp winter woods--the trees clustered

like phantoms close to the road--there had been an ice storm, and the

glistening tops of the pines shone in the night like fairy trees in

crystal urns. A few stars were out, big and bright in a sky faintly

blue; as Mrs. Evremond lifted her face to them they seemed to shine on

her as never before. She looked up into the heavens with a childlike

sweetness, and perhaps, in her hope and her goodness, with as pure a

faith as prayer ever carried. She was possibly deserted definitely by

the man she loved. She had been betrayed by him. She had never suffered

in her life as to-day. She could never so suffer again.

We all possess the power to make those who love us suffer just so far.

Evremond had come all at once to the high-tide mark of his limit. He

could never cause her such keen pain again, and he paid the penalty.

She loved him not less but differently, with a tenderness that comes

only when we have ceased to lean--to repose; with a protection that

only comes when we are conscious of weakness; with renunciation that

only comes when we see and accept the destruction of the ideal, the

death of illusion, and take up with courage the reality and embrace it

instead.

“He shall never know that I know,” she murmured, “unless he wishes to.

He has a right to his life; he has a right to love where he likes, not

by law, but because of his nature. If he loves me still, if he wants

to go on as we are, he will make me feel it to-night. I shall know

to-night, and for all our future he shall decide.”

* * * * *

Mrs. Evremond was a methodical woman of reasonable habits, and not

given to tardy wanderings about shops or prolonged absences from her

home. She was on this night very late indeed. The long time Evremond

waited for her confirmed his most unpleasant fears. He had come in

about six and gone to the salon to wait her probably speedy entrance.

Then, with the nervous impatience of a person who had every reason to

dread, and every reason to hope for, the arrival of the expected, he

watched the clock mercilessly mark hour after hour. At eight--never had

she been out so late before--he said, definitely:

“She has left me--there is no doubt about it. She knows everything, and

she never wants to see me again.”

Such a fact as the termination of their married relations, in the most

extreme moments of his interest in another, he had never thought of--he

had never wished for. He had always considered his wife suited to him,

understanding his idiosyncrasies, patient and a pleasant background,

but never had he supposed that the naked truth of the loss of her--or

the risk of the loss of her--would fill him with dismay.

Not caring to suggest significance in her absence by questioning the

servants, he waited in the salon without giving orders to retard the

dinner. Every passing cab that showed evidence of drawing up to the

curbstone made him go to the window, only to see the vehicle roll

unconcernedly past. His wife had left the house at five o’clock in her

carriage, which had been sent back from the Champs Elysées; this was

all he knew save that she had been to his studio half an hour before

his rendezvous, and had there dropped her glove with the compromising

letter. The end, then, of his conventional commonplace married life was

to be a kind of tragedy; the public were to have their taste offended

by his delinquencies--or to remain indifferent to the subject.

At all events, the poignancy of the affair was reserved for himself

alone. Consistent with his self-absorbed nature, he pictured but one

sufferer. He allotted to his wife righteous anger, disgust and a

jealous pride--which, nevertheless, he justified--and nothing else.

With surprise and vexation he discovered that he was suffering, and,

unused to pain of any kind, annoyed and ill at ease with his conscience

and his fate, he could have snapped at his irritation like an animal at

a tantalizing wound.

If she were, indeed, gone, then his home was wrecked in consequence of

his passing passion for a woman he had always thought in no wise equal

to the wife whom he had dishonored, whom he, nevertheless, discovered

he treasured and valued and could not lightly lose. What folly--what

poor logic--what false judgment! Neither logic nor judgment entered

into the case, and he knew it, nor did an overwhelming temptation of

a grand passion justify even remotely his behavior in his eyes; he

admitted his weakness, his facile drifting, when he took no means to

stem the tide, his half-cynical pastime. It looked to have cost him

dear.