As sentiments whose characters have changed in the unalterable

and fickle moment of time, when love is love no more and desire

non-existent, become as unpleasant and safe as they were secret and

dangerous, so he thought of his late friendship with anger and held

it cheap, a priceless imitation for which perhaps he had given a pure

jewel in stupid exchange.

If she did not come in by nine o’clock he would go to her, to her

mother’s, where she had undoubtedly taken refuge in the sudden storm

that had driven her from her own doors. Once there, facing her,

what should he say? She was so simple, so direct, so honest, so

unworldly. He was too intelligent not to comprehend all that occasion

would require of his duplicity, subtleties, to dupe her, to make her

believe--what? He could _not_ make her now believe anything but the

truth. Her entire confidence had spared him hitherto the necessity of

lying to her. He owed her that.

As he said this to himself, the debt of everything that he owed came

very practically to his mind. All the peace he had known; agreeable

and courteous companionship whenever he had sought it; the grace and

comfort of a well-ordered household; and, if anything further, he had

for a long time been too careless to foster it, unheedful of its value.

If she were only a habit, she was a fixed one, more steadfast than any

other hitherto formed. What should he say to her? Since he could not

trick her to regard the situation with anything but disgust and anger,

he would tell her the truth and plead weakness without love and beg her

forgiveness. His nature twinged at this, a burning flush made him hot

all over. A distaste of the cowardice in such confessions nauseated

him. If she forgave him, if he made a clean breast of it in loyalty to

her and disloyalty to the other, things would never be the same again.

Between them there would always be his weakness and her nobility.

Before humiliations such as these some natures do not shrink. Evremond

shivered at it with all his sensibility and pride.

“Not,” he acknowledged, “that I am too beastly proud to own up, but

that I dread the result to us both. _Que faire?_”

At nine o’clock, his nerves on the rack, his control gone, he

telephoned to the little hotel, 75 Rue Docteur Blanche.

“Mrs. Evremond has not been at her mother’s for several days--who

wished to know? Was there anything wrong?”

“Nothing.”

He put up the receiver--a new thought seized him horribly. Why had

he supposed this the one and only solution--the quiet solution to

his wife’s problem, the sequence to her discovery? What if she had

suddenly, surprisingly, taken it to heart, and it had unnerved her? He

had not thought of her or her feelings. She loved him--she had loved

him, he knew it well--dearly.

“What if she had----” he exclaimed, aloud, white with emotion. Then:

“Nonsense,” he exclaimed, “she is not hysterical--she is control

itself.”

What was she? Really, what did he know of her accurately; when had he

seen her obliged to face any crisis in her quiet life?

He rang violently, and when the man came in, asked:

“When did madame go out, did you tell me? Tell me again.”

“At five. Charles drove madame a little way on the Champs Elysées, and

was then dismissed.”

She had been gone then five hours. There was no house of an intimate

friend to which she could have gone for advice or even familiar

confidence. She had no _intimes_, no enthusiasms; she lived, and he

knew it, for him and her home absolutely. She had built a simple,

healthful existence around him.

In this, his first solitude, his first long soliloquy, the state of

Evremond’s mind altered as did his countenance. He grew stilled,

almost appalled, at what might come to his knowledge now, at any

moment, and facts magnified by his vivid imagination became ghosts to

him--every one.

He went from the salon to her rooms--the pretty rooms of the woman of

wealth and good taste, where every article of toilet and furniture

spoke charmingly of the mistress. Mrs. Evremond’s dinner dress lay out

on the bed; her maid stood in the window looking out. With a word about

madame’s being very late to-night, she left the room discreetly.

Neither dressing table nor bureau nor secretary had any letter for

him. There was no evidence of a hasty departure, no melodramatic

chaos in the tranquil rooms that, with bright wood fires and shut-in

invitingness, waited her return. She had gone out, as usual, but not as

usual had she returned.

These rooms, to whose voices he had been for months deaf and

indifferent, spoke to him now so insistingly that he turned away from

them, not able to bear their appeal.

Back in the salon the clock marked the quarter after nine--at half-past

he would go out to the prefecture of the police--and what then? Did

this mean that he discarded the idea of a voluntary flight from him?

No--she was, of course, safe. She had simply left him without a word or

sign. He could do nothing--but suffer and wait.

In her withdrawal, in his certainty of loss of her, she grew infinitely

precious in his eyes and, above all the rest of the world, for the

first in a long time she took her rightful place. If anything sinister

had occurred he knew the whole face of life would be altered for him

forever. If she had left him, he determined to move heaven and earth to

win her back to him--and just here he turned sharply at the opening of

the salon door.

He sprang toward her--his white and drawn face wore a look of fear and

suffering that at the sight of her altered to a welcome and relief, and

with a tenderness such as had never greeted Emily Evremond in her life

before, he cried her name:

“_Emily!_” He stammered it and stopped. The face of his wife was so

different to what he would have looked for it to be, her coming was so

little what he had planned for, that he had no words at command.

“I am late. I am awfully late--I did not realize it was half-past nine.

Have you dined, Maurice?”

She laid her muff and furs down. She had only one glove on--a gray

_suède_ glove; she drew it slowly off, her other hand was bare.

“_Dined!_” echoed her husband. “Why, I’ve been waiting for you here

since six o’clock. I’ve been horribly anxious. Emily, where on earth

have you been?” He might have said, “Where in heaven?” for her face was

heavenly. He knew her for a pretty woman, a graceful woman, but the

face of his wife, as she stood looking at him, quiet, unemotional, was

of a divinity that made him marvel. He felt more infinitely far away

from her than if she had not returned to him.

“I am sorry,” she said. “I had some things to do, and I did not realize

the time. You must be starved, Maurice.”

What things--what had she done and planned further to do? That tears

and reproaches and accusations were not in the rôle she had given

herself, he saw. Any opening of the subject by him he felt would be a

grave mistake. If she said nothing he would ignore that she knew. She

did not, of course, know yet that he had found her glove, even if she

had purposely left it--how could she be sure that he would return?

Perhaps she did not know that she had lost it, or where. His heart

leaped at the respite--the little respite it was--his color came back,

and the possibility of a natural attitude.

She had gone over to the mirror and was taking off her hat tranquilly,

instead of going to her own room. She arranged her hair deftly and

lightly with a touch here and there. Maurice watched her, and the

light on her hands and on the jewels of her engagement ring and the

plain round of her wedding ring. Her hands were small; on one hand all

day she had worn a gray glove, and between it and her palm had lain the

letter with its cruel flaunting to her of his treachery and his sin.

And she returned to him like this--gentle, controlled!

He drew a deep breath. “What pluck!” he thought. “What a woman!” He

adored her, and all that her unspoken forgiveness meant, all that her

grace conceded, worked in him a change--a conversion. Maurice Evremond

was a different man to the one who had left her that very morning--she

had won her husband.

And she, for her part, was under the spell of his greeting. She wanted

never to forget his face until its pallor and its transfiguration,

until its significance, were fixed upon her heart. He had believed her

gone--and he cared. He answered her question unconsciously without

speaking a word. If he loved her ever so little, she would win the

rest. She would supersede any other woman in the world with him. She

turned with a smile to find his eyes fixed on her.

“Let’s go in to dinner as we are, Maurice, it’s so late.”

Evremond came to her, put his arms around her; for the thousandth part

of a second he felt her shrink. He drew her close. Under his touch her

face suffused like a bride’s. He saw now, as he held her, the marks of

tears on her eyes; the illuminating of her spirit had concealed them

until now, but the human touch brought her to life.

The sharp drawing of the cord, as the curtains were pulled back between

salon and dining room, made them start apart as the _maitre d’hôtel_

summoned them to a repast already two hours late.

“_Madame est servie._”

[Illustration]

The DOG STAR

By Joseph C. Lincoln

[Illustration]

It commenced the day after we took old man Stumpton out codfishin’. Me

and Cap’n Jonadab both told Peter T. Brown that the cod wa’n’t bitin’

much at that season, but he said cod be jiggered. “What’s troublin’ me

jest now is landin’ suckers,” he says.

So the four of us got into the _Patience M._--she’s Jonadab’s

catboat--and sot sail for the Crab Ledge. And we hadn’t more’n got our

lines over the side than we struck into a school of dogfish. Now, if

you know anything about fishin’ you know that when the dogfish strike

on it’s “good-by, cod!” So when Stumpton hauled a big fat one over the

rail I could tell that Jonadab was jest ready to swear. But do you

think it disturbed your old friend, Peter Brown? No, sir! He never

winked an eye.

“By Jove!” he sings out, starin’ at that blamed dogfish as if ’twas

a gold dollar. “By Jove!” says he, “that’s the finest specimen of a

Labrador mack’rel ever I see. Bait up, Stump, and go at ’em again.”

So Stumpton, havin’ lived in Montana ever sence he was five years old,

and not havin’ sighted salt water in all that time, he don’t know but

what there is sech critters as “Labrador mack’rel,” and he does go at

’em, hammer and tongs. When we come ashore we had eighteen dogfish,

four sculpin and a skate, and Stumpton was the happiest loon in

Ostable County. It was all we could do to keep him from cookin’ one of

them “mack’rel” with his own hands. If Jonadab hadn’t steered him out

of the way while I sneaked down to the Port and bought a bass, we’d

have had to eat dogfish--we would, as sure as I’m a foot high.

Stumpton and his daughter, Maudina, was at the Old Home House, at

Wellmouth Port. ’Twas late in September, and the boarders had cleared

out. Old Dillaway--Ebenezer Dillaway, Peter’s father-in-law--had

decoyed the pair on from Montana because him and some Wall Street

sharks were figgerin’ on buyin’ some copper country out that way that

Stumpton owned. Then Dillaway was too sick, and Peter, who was jest

back from his weddin’ tower, brought the Montana victims down to the

Cape with the excuse to give ’em a good time alongshore, but really

to keep ’em safe and out of the way till Ebenezer got well enough to

finish robbin’ ’em. Belle--Peter’s wife--stayed behind to look after

papa.

Stumpton was a great tall man, narrer in the beam, and with a

figgerhead like a henhawk. He jest enjoyed himself here at the Cape.

He fished, and loafed, and shot at a mark. He sartinly could shoot.

The only thing he was wishin’ for was somethin’ alive to shoot at, and

Brown had promised to take him out duck shootin’. ’Twas too early for

ducks, but that didn’t worry Peter any; he’d a-had ducks to shoot at if

he bought all the poultry in the township.

Maudina was like her name, pretty but sort of soft and mushy. She had

big blue eyes and a baby face, and her principal cargo was poetry. She

had a deckload of it, and she’d heave it overboard every time the wind

changed. She was forever orderin’ the ocean to “roll on,” but she

didn’t mean it; I had her out sailin’ once when the bay was a little

mite rugged, and I know. She was jest out of a convent school, and you

could see she wasn’t used to most things--includin’ men.

The fust week slipped along, and everything was serene. Bulletins from

Ebenezer more encouragin’ every day, and no squalls in sight. But ’twas

almost too slick. I was afraid the calm was a weather breeder, and sure

enough, the hurricane struck us the day after that fishin’ trip.

Peter had gone drivin’ with Maudina and her dad, and me and Cap’n

Jonadab was smokin’ on the front piazza. I was pullin’ at a pipe, but

the cap’n had the home end of one of Stumpton’s cigars harpooned on the

little blade of his jackknife, and was busy pumpin’ the last drop of

comfort out of it. I never see a man who wanted to git his money’s wuth

more’n Jonadab. I give you my word, I expected to see him swaller that

cigar remnant every minute.

And all to once he gives a gurgle in his throat.

“Take a drink of water,” says I, scared like.

“Well, by time!” says he, p’intin’.

A feller had jest turned the corner of the house and was headin’ up in

our direction. He was a thin, lengthy craft, with more’n the average

amount of wrists stickin’ out of his sleeves, and with long black hair

trimmed aft behind his ears and curlin’ on the back of his neck. He

had high cheek bones and kind of sunk-in black eyes, and altogether he

looked like “Dr. Macgoozleum, the Celebrated Blackfoot Medicine Man.”

If he’d hollered: “Sagwa Bitters, only one dollar a bottle!” I wouldn’t

have been surprised.

But his clothes--don’t say a word! His coat was long and buttoned up

tight, so’s you couldn’t tell whether he had a vest on or not--though

’twas a safe bet he hadn’t--and it and his pants was made of the

loudest kind of black-and-white checks. No nice quiet pepper-and-salt,

you understand, but the checkerboard kind, the oilcloth kind, the kind

that looks like the marble floor in the Boston post office. They was

pretty tolerable seedy, and so was his hat. Oh, he was a last year’s

bird’s nest _now_, but when them clothes was fresh--whew! the northern

lights and a rainbow mixed wouldn’t have been more’n a cloudy day

’longside of him.

He run up to the piazza like a clipper comin’ into port, and he sweeps

off that rusty hat and hails us grand and easy.

“Good-mornin’, gentlemen,” says he.

“We don’t want none,” says Jonadab, decided.

The feller looked surprised. “I beg your pardon,” says he. “You don’t

want any--what?”

“We don’t want any ‘Life of King Solomon’ nor ‘The World’s Big

Classifyers.’ And we don’t want to buy any patent paint, nor sewin’

machines, nor clothes washers, nor climbin’ evergreen roses, nor

rheumatiz salve. And we don’t want our pictures painted, neither.”

Jonadab was gittin’ excited. Nothin’ riles him wuss than a peddler,

unless it’s a woman sellin’ tickets to a church fair. The feller

swelled up until I thought the top button on that thunderstorm coat

would drag anchor, sure.

“You are mistaken,” says he. “I have called to see Mr. Peter Brown; he

is--er--a relative of mine.”

Well, you could have blown me and Jonadab over with a cat’s-paw. We

went on our beam ends, so’s to speak. A relation of Peter T.’s; why, if

he’d been twice the panorama he was we’d have let him in when he said

that. Loud clothes, we figgered, must run in the family. We remembered

how Peter was dressed the fust time we met him.

“You don’t say!” says I. “Come right up and set down, Mr--Mr.----”

“Montague,” says the feller. “Booth Montague. Permit me to present my

card.”

He dove into the hatches of his checkerboards and rummaged around, but

he didn’t find nothin’ but holes, I jedge, because he looked dreadful

put out, and begged our pardons five or six times.

“Dear me!” says he. “This is embarrassin’. I’ve forgot my cardcase.”

We told him never mind the card; any of Peter’s folks was more’n

welcome. So he come up the steps and set down in a piazza chair like

King Edward perchin’ on his throne. Then he hove out some remarks about

its bein’ a nice morning’, all in a condescendin’ sort of way, as if

he usually attended to the weather himself, but had been sort of busy

lately, and had handed the job over to one of the crew. We told him all

about Peter, and Belle, and Ebenezer, and about Stumpton and Maudina.

He was a good deal interested, and asked consider’ble many questions.

Pretty soon we heard a carriage rattlin’ up the road.

“Hello!” says I. “I guess that’s Peter and the rest comin’ now.”

Mr. Montague got off his throne kind of sudden.

“Ahem!” says he. “Is there a room here where I may--er--receive Mr.

Brown in a less public manner? It will be rather a--er--surprise for

him, and----”

Well, there was a good deal of sense in that. I know ’twould surprise

_me_ to have such an image as he was sprung on me without any notice.

We steered him into the gents’ parlor, and shut the door. In a minute

the horse and wagon come into the yard. Maudina said she’d had a

“heavenly” drive, and unloaded some poetry concernin’ the music of

billows, and pine trees, and sech. She and her father went up to their

rooms, and when the decks was clear Jonadab and me tackled Peter T.

“Peter,” says Jonadab, “we’ve got a surprise for you. One of your

relations has come.”

Brown, he did looked surprised, but he didn’t act as he was any too

joyful.

“Relation of _mine_?” says he. “Come off! What’s his name?”

We told him Montague, Booth Montague. He laffed.

“Wake up and turn over,” he says. “They never had anything like that in

my fam’ly. Booth Montague! Sure ’twa’n’t Algernon Coughdrops?”

We said no, ’twas Booth Montague, and that he was waitin’ in the

gents’ parlor. So he laffed again, and said somethin’ about sendin’

for Laura Lean Jibbey, and then we started.

The checkerboard feller was standin’ up when we opened the door.

“Hello, Petey!” says he, cool as a cucumber, and stickin’ out a foot

and a ha’f of wrist with a hand at the end of it.

Now, it takes consider’ble to upset Peter Theodosius Brown. Up to

that time and hour I’d have bet on him against anything short of an

earthquake. But Booth Montague done it--knocked him plumb out of water.

Peter actually turned white.

“Great----” he began, and then stopped and swallered. “_Hank!_” he

says, and set down in a chair.

“The same,” says Montague, wavin’ the starboard extension of the

checkerboard. “Petey, it does me good to set my lamps on you.

Especially now, when you’re the reel thing.”

Brown never answered for a minute. Then he canted over to port and

reached down into his pocket. “Well,” says he, “how much?”

But Hank, or Booth, or Montague--whatever his name was--he waved his

flipper disdainful. “Nun-nun-nun-no, Petey, my son,” he says, smilin’.

“It ain’t ’how much?’ this time. When I heard how you’d rung the bell

the first shot out the box and was rollin’ in coin, I said to myself:

‘Here’s where the prod comes back to his own.’ I’ve come to live with

you, Petey, and you pay the freight.”

Peter jumped out of the chair. “_Live_ with me!” he says. “You Friday

evenin’ amateur night! It’s back to ‘Ten Nights in a Barroom’ for

yours!” he says.

“Oh, no, it ain’t!” says Hank, cheerful. “It’ll be back to Popper

Dillaway and Belle. When I tell ’em I’m your little cousin Henry and

how you and me worked the territories together--why--well, I guess

there’ll be gladness round the dear home nest; hey?”

Peter didn’t say nothin’. Then he fetched a long breath and motioned

with his head to Cap’n Jonadab and me. We see we weren’t invited to

the family reunion, so we went out and shut the door. But we did pity

Peter; I snum if we didn’t!

It was ’most an hour afore Brown come out of that room. When he did he

took Jonadab and me by the arm and led us out back of the barn.

“Fellers,” he says, sad and mournful, “that--that plaster cast in a

crazy-quilt,” he says, referrin’ to Montague, “is a cousin of mine.

That’s the livin’ truth,” says he, “and the only excuse I can make is

that ’tain’t my fault. He’s my cousin, all right, and his name’s Hank

Schmults, but the sooner you box that fact up in your forgetory, the

smoother ’twill be for yours drearily, Peter T. Brown. He’s to be Mr.

Booth Montague, the celebrated English poet, so long’s he hangs out at

the Old Home; and he’s to hang out here until--well, until I can dope

out a way to get rid of him.”

We didn’t say nothin’ for a minute--jest thought. Then Jonadab says,

kind of puzzled: “What makes you call him a poet?” he says.

Peter answered pretty snappy: ”’Cause there’s only two or three jobs

that a long-haired image like him could hold down,” he says. “I’d call

him a musician if he could play ’Bedelia’ on a jews’-harp; but he

can’t, so’s he’s got to be a poet.”

And a poet he was for the next week or so. Peter drove down to

Wellmouth that night and bought some respectable black clothes, and the

follerin’ mornin’, when the celebrated Booth Montague come sailin’ into

the dinin’ room, with his curls brushed back from his forehead, and his

new cutaway on, and his wrists covered up with clean cuffs, blessed

if he didn’t look distinguished--at least, that’s the only word I can

think of that fills the bill. And he talked beautiful language, not

like the slang he hove at Brown and us in the gents’ parlor.

Peter done the honors, introducin’ him to us and the Stumptons as

a friend who’d come from England unexpected, and Hank he bowed and

scraped, and looked absent-minded and crazy--like a poet ought to. Oh,

he done well at it! You could see that ’twas jest pie for him.

And ’twas pie for Maudina, too. Bein’, as I said, kind of green

concernin’ men folks, and likewise takin’ to poetry like a cat to fish,

she jest fairly gushed over this fraud. She’d reel off a couple of

fathom of verses from fellers named Spencer or Waller, or sech like,

and he’d never turn a hair, but back he’d come and say they was good,

but he preferred Confucius, or Methuselah, or somebody so antique that

she nor nobody else ever heard of ’em. Oh, he run a safe course, and he

had _her_ in tow afore they turned the fust mark.

Jonadab and me got worried. We see how things was goin’, and we didn’t

like it. Stumpton was havin’ too good a time to notice, goin’ after

“Labrador mack’rel” and so on, and Peter T. was too busy steerin’

the cruises to pay any attention. But one afternoon I come by the

summerhouse unexpected, and there sat Booth Montague and Maudina, him

with a clove hitch round her waist, and she lookin’ up into his eyes

like they were peekholes in the fence ’round paradise. That was enough.

It jest simply _couldn’t_ go any further, so that night me and Jonadab

had a confab up in my room.

“Barzilla,” says the cap’n, “if we tell Peter that that relation of his

is figgerin’ to marry Maudina Stumpton for her money, and that he’s

more’n likely to elope with her, ’twill pretty nigh kill Pete, won’t

it? No, sir; it’s up to you and me. We’ve got to figger out some way to

git rid of the critter ourselves.”

“It’s a wonder to me,” I says, “that Peter puts up with him. Why don’t

he order him to clear out, and tell Belle if he wants to? She can’t

blame Peter ’cause his uncle was father to an outrage like that.”

Jonadab looks at me scornful. “Can’t, hey?” he says. “And her

high-toned and chummin’ in with the bigbugs? It’s easy to see you never

was married,” says he.

Well, I never was, so I shet up.

We set there and thought and thought, and by and by I commenced to

sight an idee in the offin’. ’Twas hull down at fust, but pretty soon I

got it into speakin’ distance, and then I broke it gentle to Jonadab.

He grabbed at it like the “Labrador mack’rel” grabbed Stumpton’s hook.

We set up and planned until pretty nigh three o’clock, and all the next

day we put in our spare time loadin’ provisions and water aboard the

_Patience M._ We put grub enough aboard to last a month.

Just at daylight the mornin’ after that we knocked at the door of

Montague’s bedroom. When he woke up enough to open the door--it took

some time, ’cause eatin’ and sleepin’ was his mainstay--we told him

that we was plannin’ an early-mornin’ fishin’ trip, and if he wanted to

go with the folks he must come down to the landin’ quick. He promised

to hurry, and I stayed by the door to see that he didn’t git away. In

about ten minutes we had him in the skiff rowin’ off to the _Patience

M._

“Where’s the rest of the crowd?” says he, when he stepped aboard.

“They’ll be along when we’re ready for ’em,” says I. “You go below

there, will you, and stow away the coats and things.”

So he crawled into the cabin, and I helped Jonadab git up sail. We

intended towin’ the skiff, so I made her fast astern. In ha’f a shake

we was under way and headed out of the cove. When that British poet

stuck his nose out of the companion we was abreast the p’int.

“Hi!” says he, scramblin’ into the cockpit. “What’s this mean?”

I was steerin’ and feelin’ toler’ble happy over the way things had

worked out.

“Nice sailin’ breeze, ain’t it?” says I, smilin’.

“Where’s Mau--Miss Stumpton?” he says, wild like.

“She’s abed, I cal’late,” says I, “gittin’ her beauty sleep. Why don’t

_you_ turn in? Or are you pretty enough now?”

He looked fust at me and then at Jonadab, and his face turned a little

yellower than usual.

“What kind of a game is this?” he asks, brisk. “Where are you goin’?”

’Twas Jonadab that answered. “We’re bound,” says he, “for the Bermudas.

It’s a lovely place to spend the winter, they tell me,” he says.

That poet never made no remarks. He jumped to the stern and caught hold

of the skiff’s pointer. I shoved him out of the way and picked up the

boat hook. Jonadab rolled up his shirt sleeves and laid hands on the

centerboard stick.

“I wouldn’t, if I was you,” says the cap’n.

Jonadab weighs pretty close to two hundred, and most of it’s gristle.

I’m not quite so much, fur’s tonnage goes, but I ain’t exactly a canary

bird. Montague seemed to size things up in a jiffy. He looked at us,

then at the sail, and then at the shore out over the stern.

“Done!” says he. “Done! And by a couple of ‘come-ons’!”

And down he sets on the thwart.

“Is there anything to drink aboard this liner?” asks Booth Hank

Montague.

* * * * *

Well, we sailed all that day and all that night. Course we didn’t

reelly intend to make the Bermudas. What we intended to do was to

cruise around alongshore for a couple of weeks, long enough for the

Stumptons to git back to Dillaway’s, settle the copper bus’ness and

break for Montana. Then we was goin’ home again and turn Brown’s

relation over to him to take care of. We knew Peter’d have some plan

thought out by that time. We’d left a note tellin’ him what we’d done,

and sayin’ that we trusted to him to explain matters to Maudina and her

dad. We knew that explainin’ was Peter’s main holt.

The poet was pretty chipper for a spell. He set on the thwart and

bragged about what he’d do when he got back to “Petey” again. He said

we couldn’t git rid of him so easy. Then he spun yarns about what him

and Brown did when they was out West together. They was interestin’

yarns, but we could see why Peter wa’n’t anxious to introduce Cousin

Henry to Belle. Then the _Patience M._ got out where ’twas pretty

rugged, and she rolled consider’ble, and after that we didn’t hear much

more from friend Booth--he was too busy to talk.

That night me and Jonadab took watch and watch. In the mornin’ it

thickened up and looked squally. I got kind of worried. By nine o’clock

there was every sign of a no’theaster, and we see we’d have to put

in somewheres and ride it out. So we headed for a place we’ll call

Baytown, though that wa’n’t the name of it. It’s a queer, old-fashioned

town, and it’s on an island; maybe you can guess it from that.

Well, we run into the harbor and let go anchor. Jonadab crawled into

the cabin to git some terbacker, and I was for’ard coilin’ the throat

halyard. All to once I heard oars rattlin’, and I turned my head; what

I see made me let out a yell like a siren whistle.

There was that everlastin’ poet in the skiff--you remember we’d

been towin’ it astern--and he was jest cuttin’ the painter with his

jackknife. Next minute he’d picked up the oars and was headin’ for the

wharf, doublin’ up and stretchin’ out like a frog swimmin’, and with

his curls streamin’ in the wind like a rooster’s tail in a hurricane.

He had a long start ’fore Jonadab and me woke up enough to think of

chasin’ him.

But we woke up fin’lly, and the way we flew round that catboat was a

caution. I laid into them halyards, and I had the gaff up to the peak

afore Jonadab got the anchor clear of the bottom. Then I jumped to the

tiller, and the _Patience M._ took after that skiff like a pup after a

tomcat. We run alongside the wharf jest as Booth Hank climbed over the

stringpiece.

“Git after him, Barzilla!” hollers Cap’n Jonadab. “I’ll make her fast.”

Well, I hadn’t took more’n three steps when I see ’twas goin’ to be a

long chase. Montague unfurled them thin legs of his and got over the

ground somethin’ wonderful. All you could see was a pile of dust and

coat tails flappin’.

Up on the wharf we went and round the corner into a straggly kind of

road with old-fashioned houses on both sides of it. Nobody in the

yards, nobody at the windows; quiet as could be, except that off ahead,

somewheres, there was music playin’.

That road was a quarter of a mile long, but we galloped through it so

fast that the scenery was nothin’ but a blur. Booth was gainin’ all the

time, but I stuck to it like a good one. We took a short cut through a

yard, piled over a fence and come out into another road, and up at the

head of it was a crowd of folks--men and women and children and dogs.

“Stop thief!” I hollers, and ’way astern I heard Jonadab bellerin’:

“Stop thief!”

Montague dives headfust for the crowd. He fell over a baby carriage,

and I gained a tack ’fore he got up. He wa’n’t more’n ten yards ahead

when I come bustin’ through, upsettin’ children and old women, and

landed in what I guess was the main street of the place and right

abreast of a parade that was marchin’ down the middle of it.

Fust there was the band, four fellers tootin’ and bangin’ like fo’mast

hands on a fishin’ smack in a fog. Then there was a big darky totin’ a

banner with “Jenkins’ Unparalleled Double Uncle Tom’s Cabin Company,

Number 2,” on it in big letters. Behind him was a boy leadin’ two

great, savage-lookin’ dogs--bloodhounds, I found out afterward--by

chains. Then come a pony cart with Little Eva and Eliza’s child in it;

Eva was all gold hair and beautifulness. And astern of her was Marks,

the Lawyer, on his donkey. There was lots more behind him, but these

was all I had time to see jest then.

Now, there was but one way for Booth Hank to git acrost that street,

and that was to bust through the procession. And, as luck would have

it, the place he picked out to cross was jest ahead of the bloodhounds.

And the fust thing I knew, them dogs stretched out their noses and took

a long sniff, and then bu’st out howlin’ like all possessed. The boy,

he tried to hold ’em, but ’twas no go. They yanked the chains out of

his hands and took after that poet as if he owed ’em somethin’. And

every one of the four million other dogs that was in the crowd on the

sidewalks fell into line, and such howlin’ and yappin’ and scamperin’

and screamin’ you never heard.

Well, ’twas a mixed-up mess. That was the end of the parade. Next

minute I was racin’ across country with the whole town and the Uncle

Tommers astern of me, and a string of dogs stretched out ahead

fur’s you could see. ’Way up in the lead was Booth Montague and the

bloodhounds, and away aft I could hear Jonadab yellin’: “Stop thief!”

’Twas lively while it lasted, but it didn’t last long. There was a

little hill at the end of the field, and where the poet dove over

t’other side of it the bloodhounds all but had him. Afore I got to the

top of the rise I heard the awfullest powwow goin’ on in the holler,

and thinks I: “They’re eatin’ him alive!”

But they wa’n’t. When I hove in sight Montague was settin’ up on the

ground at the foot of the sand bank he’d fell into, and the two hounds

was rollin’ over him, lappin’ his face and goin’ on as if he was their

grandpa jest home from sea with his wages in his pocket. And round

them, in a double ring, was all the town dogs, crazy mad, and barkin’

and snarlin’, but scared to go any closer.

In a minute more the folks begun to arrive; boys first, then girls and

men, and then the women. Marks come trottin’ up, poundin’ the donkey

with his umbrella.

“Here, Lion! Here, Tige!” he yells. “Quit it! Let him alone!” Then he

looks at Montague, and his jaw kind of drops.

“Why--why, _Hank_!” he says.

A tall, lean critter, in a black tail coat and a yaller vest and

lavender pants, comes puffin’ up. He was the manager, we found out

afterward.

“Have they bit him?” says he. Then he done jest the same as Marks; his

mouth opened and his eyes stuck out. “_Hank Schmults_, by the livin’

jingo!” says he.

Booth Montague looks at the two of ’em kind of sick and lonesome.

“Hello, Barney! How are you, Sullivan?” he says.

I thought ’twas about time for me to git prominent. I stepped up, and

was jest goin’ to say somethin’ when somebody cuts in ahead of me.

“Hum!” says a voice, a woman’s voice, and toler’ble crisp and vinegary.

“Hum! it’s you, is it? I’ve been lookin’ for _you_!”

’Twas Little Eva in the pony cart. Her lovely posy hat was hangin’ on

the back of her neck, her gold hair had slipped back so’s you could see

the black under it, and her beautiful red cheeks was kind of streaky.

She looked some older and likewise mad.

“Hum!” says she, gittin’ out of the cart. “It’s you, is it, Hank

Schmults? Well, p’r’aps you’ll tell me where you’ve been for the last

two weeks? What do you mean by runnin’ away and leavin’ your----”

Montague interrupted her. “Hold on, Maggie, hold on!” he begs. “_Don’t_

make a row here. It’s all a mistake; I’ll explain it to you all right.

Now, please----”

“Explain!” hollers Eva, kind of curlin’ up her fingers and movin’

toward him. “Explain, will you? Why, you miser’ble, low-down----”

But the manager took hold of her arm. He’d been lookin’ at the crowd,

and I cal’late he saw that here was the chance for the best kind of

an advertisement. He whispered in her ear. Next thing I knew she

clasped her hands together, let out a scream and runs up and grabs the

celebrated British poet round the neck.

“Booth!” says she. “My husband! Saved! Saved!”

And she went all to pieces and cried all over his necktie.

And then Marks trots up the child, and that young one hollers: “Papa!

papa!” and tackles Hank around the legs. And I’m blessed if Montague

don’t slap his hand to his forehead, and toss back his curls, and look

up at the sky, and sing out: “My wife and babe! Restored to me after

all these years! The heavens be thanked!”

Well, ’twas a sacred sort of time. The town folks tiptoed away, the

men lookin’ solemn but glad, and the women swabbin’ their deadlights

and sayin’ how affectin’ ’twas, and so on. Oh, you could see that show

would do bus’ness _that_ night, if it never did afore.

The manager got after Jonadab and me later on, and did his best to pump

us, but he didn’t find out much. He told us that Montague b’longed to

the Uncle Tom’s Cabin Company, and that he’d disappeared a fortni’t or

so afore, when they were playin’ at Hyannis. Eva was his wife, and the

child was their little boy. The bloodhounds knew him, and that’s why

they chased him so.

“What was you two yellin’ ‘Stop thief!’ after him for?” says he. “Has

he stole anything?”

We says: “No.”

“Then what did you want to get him for?” he says.

“We didn’t,” says Jonadab. “We wanted to git rid of him. We don’t want

to see him no more.”

You could tell that the manager was puzzled, but he laffed.

“All right,” says he. “If I know anything about Maggie--that’s Mrs.

Schmults--he won’t git loose ag’in.”

We only saw Montague to talk to but once that day. Then he peeked out

from under the winder shade at the hotel and asked us if we’d told

anybody where’d he been. When he found we hadn’t, he was thankful.

“You tell Petey,” says he, “that he’s won the whole pot, kitty and all.

I don’t think I’ll visit him again, nor Belle, neither.”

“I wouldn’t,” says I. “They might write to Maudina that you was a

married man. And old Stumpton’s been prayin’ for somethin’ alive to

shoot at,” I says.

The manager give Jonadab and me a couple of tickets, and we went to the

show that night. And when we saw Booth Hank Montague paradin’ about the

stage and defyin’ the slave hunters, and tellin’ ’em he was a free man,

standin’ on the Lord’s free soil, and so on, we realized ’twould have

been a crime to let him do anything else.

“As an imitation poet,” says Jonadab, “he was a kind of mildewed

article, but as a play actor--well, there may be some that can beat

him, but _I_ never see ’em!”

[Illustration]

AS IT ENDED

God planned me for a butterfly,

But I was marred i’ the making;

What is it that old Omar says

Of the Potter’s hand a-shaking?

Ah, no, not that, the colors ran,

The form turned out awry,

And so I’m what they call a man

Who’d be a butterfly.

FARRINGDON DAVIS.

_The TEARS of UNDINE_

By

Edith Macvane

[Illustration]

In the morning young Glyn lost his steamer, so he was forced to spend

the whole day at Pemaquid; in the afternoon he lost his heart, so he

was forced to stay there for his entire vacation.

This is the way it happened.

After luncheon he went out to sit all by himself on the end of the

pier, with a book on “Recent Developments in Dairy Machinery”; for

Glyn was a young patent lawyer, a very rising one, in the city of New

York; and, as he had failed to find one familiar face in this far-away

Maine resort, it seemed to him that he could do nothing better with

his time of waiting than devote it to his business. So he sat deep in

study, lifting an eye occasionally to the granite cliffs, the dark,

ancient fir trees, and the bay with its distant rim of purple-shadowed

hills; while the old fisherman beside him smoked his pipe placidly, and

the noisy crowd of bathers in by the shore splashed one another with

screams of mirth. The student sighed occasionally, for, though a lawyer

and a good one, he was still young; then he reproved himself for his

sighing, for he aimed to be rather superior, and was also, as a matter

of fact, rather shy.

Suddenly a shower of scattering drops fell cold upon his neck and

glittered upon the page before him. He started and looked up; the sky

was blue and cloudless, his ancient neighbor as placid as the day

itself. Then it seemed to him that he heard a laugh, the merest tinkle

of a laugh, from somewhere below the wharf; and, starting to his feet

and looking downward, he beheld a mermaid floating in the water beneath

him.

She lay slim and green upon the gentle harbor swell, her white arms

outstretched, her eyelids closed, her wet, upturned face framed by the

floating wreaths of dark hair that coiled and rippled in the water

about her. Suddenly she threw up her hands and sank slowly, vanishing

with a cloud of little bubbles. Glyn started back, horror-smitten. He

was not much of a swimmer, even in the warm waters of the Sound; and

this North Atlantic water chilled his very eyes with its icy-green

transparency.

Nevertheless, under the racial impulse of the life-saver, he threw off

his coat and swung his arms preparatory to a jump. Suddenly the hoary

and languid old sea dog by his side reached out a slow, restraining

hand.

“Don’t go wettin’ yourself for nothing young fellah! That girl, she’s a

fish. Watch and see her come up again.”

In a cold perspiration of anxiety the young man waited for a

fulfillment of these words. The suspense seemed endless, till suddenly,

and at an amazing distance, the waters heaved and parted, and the

swimmer’s sleek dark head emerged like a seal’s. Back she came to the

wharf, swimming with strokes like those of an oarsman--easy, long and

sure. At the end of the pier she paused and clung to the foot of the

slippery green steps that ran down the side of the piles, and, resting

her chin upon her clasped arms, she glanced up at the two men above

her like a severe and dripping cherub. The old fisherman returned to

his line, but the student, flinging away his book, ran down the oozy

staircase to meet her.

“May I--may I be of any assistance to you?” he inquired, with eager

politeness.

She continued to look up at him with the same disapproving air. “You

didn’t jump in after me, did you?” she observed, suddenly.

“Well, no,” returned Glyn, somewhat dazed at this greeting. “You see, I

was told that you could swim.”

She glared up at the unobserving fisherman. “That was Ben--old

tattle-tale!” she hissed; then, turning back to the young man, she

inquired, with sudden pathos: “And how should you have felt if I had

never come up again?”

“Like a murderer,” replied Stephen Glyn, solemnly. The answer seemed to

please her, for she relaxed her frown. “Oh, well, you are all right,

anyway,” she was good enough to observe, as she loosed her hold upon

the step and swam slowly away to the shore.

So when the afternoon steamer left Pemaquid, one hour later, it left

without Stephen Glyn.

He told himself that the air of this sea-girt promontory was just the

thing for him: good chance to learn to swim; quiet place, capital

chance to study and get at the bottom of those dairy implements. As

for the girl--she was pretty to look at, to be sure, with her big

green eyes and the glancing motions of her long white hands beneath

the water. But still what did the prettiness of a passing girl matter

to a prosaic fellow like him? “Besides,” as Stephen added, wisely, to

himself, “I’m too old for nonsense, and too young for business--so

what’s the use?”

And so, being in this indifferent frame of mind, he spent an hour in

putting on his newest English flannels and the very latest thing in

pale green shirts, and then, upon descending to the dining room, he

bribed the waiter to give him a seat at the next table to his casual

acquaintance of the pier; merely, as he told himself, out of curiosity

to see how she looked with her hair dry.

In spite of all this indifference, there was a distinct sinking at

Glyn’s heart when at last she came, passed by him, seated herself at

her table without even a glance in his direction. She seemed in high

spirits, she ate with a remarkable appetite, and she talked and laughed

incessantly with the large, pink-faced lady on her right and the jolly

youth in a blue necktie on her left. All Glyn’s honest Harvard blood

rose and boiled within him at the sight of that blue necktie--merely,

he assured himself, at the thought of recent football scores. As for

the girl, what did it matter to him if she let a dozen Yale men tell

her jokes and crack her lobster claws for her?

It must be confessed, however, even by the most disapproving and

indifferent critic, that she was charming to look upon, with her thick

hair--yellow with greenish lights--and her warm, white skin, tanned by

the sun to the pale brown of coffee with cream in it. So after dinner,

when a half dozen other youths had dispossessed the Yale man of his

monopoly, Glyn strolled up to him and inquired whether he had not seen

him at New London the month before.

The Yale man replied to these overtures of friendship with the offer of

his cigarette case, his name and the secrets of his heart. “I’m Martin,

’05,” he confided. “Ever been in New Haven? Best place on earth! I

say, how do you like Pemaquid--how long are you going to stay? There

are some ripping girls here. At least, there’s Elfie May, that girl I

sat next to at the table. Notice her? A queen, isn’t she? And you just

ought to see her swim! But she throws a fellow down so. I guess I’ll

go home to-morrow.” The blithe face drew down into sudden sadness--ah,

poor little Yale man!

“The girl that sat next to you at dinner,” mused Glyn. “Ah, yes. I

think I noticed her--rather good-looking, yes. New York girl?”

“No, Boston. Want me to introduce you?”

“If you will be so kind,” returned Glyn, with elation, and a sudden

softening of his heart toward the blue. Martin went over to the far

end of the piazza, where Miss May sat trailing her indifferent gaze

across her little court of admirers, and laughing lazily at their

witticisms and their compliments. As the Yale man spoke to her, Glyn

saw her glance flash for a brief instant in his direction, and he

started forward to meet his new friend halfway upon his return. But oh,

disappointment! “I’m so sorry,” said the pleasant little chap from New

Haven, “but she says no! I don’t know why, but she said it, just like

that--no!”

“It doesn’t matter in the least,” returned Glyn. “And thank you so much

for taking all that trouble.” He spoke gayly, but his hand trembled as

he tried to strike a light upon the side of his match case. “Here, let

me give you some fire, old chap,” cried his new acquaintance, genially.

That night Glyn did not sleep very well. Not that he cared one scrap

for a snub from a disagreeable, spoiled child! But deep down he

recognized what it was--the regretful ache, the yearning, baffled

tenderness that had newly filled his heart. He writhed in recollection

of the repulse he had received, and then forgot the pain in delight as

that glance came back to him, those eyes raised to him from the water,

eyes so thickly fringed, with dark irids rimmed in clear sea green.

Dawn broke early and brilliant; after that there was no sleep for

the restless newcomer, and suddenly it occurred to him that the best

plan--the most enjoyable and the most independent--would be to hire

a craft and go out for a day’s deep sea fishing, far from the jars

and distractions of the hotel. For though, like many sailors, he had

but little skill in swimming, he was excellent at managing a boat,

and fishing was one of his favorite sports. A descent to the pier, in

the long-shadowed quiet of the early morning, proved this plan easy

of fulfillment. Old Ben, the fisherman of the day before, was there

clearing out his tiny sloop, the _Fried Cod_. For a mildly exorbitant

sum he agreed to let the boat to the New York man for the day, provide

tackle, throw in bait, and give all necessary directions to the

fishing grounds.

So Glyn had a day of long-shore sport, of long waiting, of rolling in a

hot and oily sea, finally of hauling in fat, plobby fish--cod and hake,

which lacked blood to make even a decent fighting struggle for their

lives. Then in the calm of the sunset the _Fried Cod_ drifted back with

the tide into the little harbor on the nose of the rocky promontory.

Her skipper worked lazily at the sweeps, keeping a dazzled eye out

ahead over the glassy reflection of the golden west which fronted

him. Suddenly, as he floated in between the breakwaters, it seemed to

him that he saw the head of a swimmer silhouetted blackly against the

sunlit water, approaching him from the shore in a wake of fire.

“Sloop ahoy!” called a slow, soft voice. Glyn jumped up, his heart

beating, and with a few more vigorous side strokes the swimmer shot to

the side of the little craft and blinked two clear wet eyes up at its

skipper.

“Please, may I come aboard for a moment?”

Glyn forgot all past injuries as he bent over the side of the boat,

beaming upon the face upturned to him from its aureole of ripples.

“Oh, I can climb up all right,” she cried, in answer to his offers of

aid, and with a quick, vaulting motion she swung herself up over the

gunwale of the little sloop. Seating herself upon the thwart, she threw

back her long, wet locks from her face, and shot a glance, half serious

and wholly sweet, at the young man before her.

“I’ve been waiting for you all day,” she said, plaintively. “Why didn’t

you come in sooner?”

Glyn regarded her in amazement.

“Well, you could hardly expect me to believe that I was wanted,” he

retorted, in a slightly aggrieved tone, remembering his wrongs of last

night.

She began to laugh softly--a long, noiseless chuckle that moved even

Glyn’s watchful dignity to a smile. “Oh, you mean last night.” Glyn

noticed that her voice was deep and smooth, with just the faintest

suspicion of hoarseness, and deep, mellow tones and overtones that

vibrated richly through its inflections. “Last night, you see, is just

what I want to explain,” she went on. “You see, that little Martin

thing has such a funny way of dropping his jaw when one says no to him,

that I just couldn’t resist. And, besides, you see, I didn’t want to

have him introducing us--little calf! So, if you don’t mind, I’ll just

introduce myself: Elfrida May, that’s my name.”

Glyn looked at her seriously as he set his tiller for a course to the

anchorage near the pier. “Thanks very much,” he returned, “but, if you

don’t mind, I should rather make believe it was Undine.”

“Undine!” she cried. “Who was Undine?”

“You don’t know about poor little Undine? Very well, then, I’ll tell

you her story some time. Now you must let me introduce myself, too.”

“Oh, I know your name, Mr. Glyn,” she cried, artlessly, and, extending

her wet hand, she gave him a hearty grip, like a man’s.

Suddenly her eye roved to the floor of the little cockpit, and her face

took on suddenly its severe lines of the day before. “Ah, they are

dead!” she whispered, in a kind of horrified way; then stooping, she

picked up one of the fish--a small cod, curved in a rigid bow from nose

to tail. She stroked its slippery back tenderly. “Poor little thing!”

she mourned.

Glyn stared at her bewildered. “Don’t you approve of fishing?” he asked.

“No, I don’t!” she replied, with vehemence. “I won’t eat them, even

canned! I’d feel like a cannibal! Poor things! To drown in the lovely

green water--that wouldn’t be bad. But to be pulled out of the sea, and

drown in the air, think how horridly unpleasant! Do you mind if I put

them back again, please?” she asked, anxiously.

“Certainly not,” replied Glyn, though, as a matter of fact, he was

particularly fond of fresh boiled cod, and also proud of his morning’s

catch.

One by one the tender-hearted pirate dropped the motionless things

softly into the sea; they sank heavily, and then rose, floating

with white bellies upturned. Her eyes, as she regarded them, were

surprisingly soft and tender. “Poor things,” she murmured, “they can’t

swim any more, but I am sure that they must rest easier so. Thank you,

Mr. Glyn, for giving them back to me.”

And so their friendship began, in bewilderment and mutual good will.

Now, much can happen in a month, and as July drew near to a close

Stephen no longer tried to disguise from himself the change that had

come into his life. The question that unceasingly knocked at his brain

was no longer “Do I care for her?” but “Does she, oh, can she possibly,

care for me!” The very intensity with which he put this question to

himself made him delay, from day to day, the crucial test of putting

it to the only person that could decide it for him. So he relieved his

feelings by sending every week to Maillard’s for a huge box wrapped in

silver paper; and every morning he waited with impatient heart upon the

pier for the coming of that slim and dancing figure with the long green

silk legs, the cream-white arms and the flying strands of pale yellow

hair, that fell to the hem of the short green petticoat.

Her skill in the water was to him a constant wonder, a constant

delight. His own attempts at diving and swimming he soon gave up,

finding this northern water too cold for him; and so, in spite of

Elfrida’s gibes, he sat on the dock and watched her as she took

backward somersaults and dead-man dives and went down below in search

of sinking clam shells. Her high jump from the piles, holding up her

little skirt with a dainty hand, and winking blithely as she descended,

was a thing long to be remembered for sheer mirth, for frank, childish

joy. Yet it was then that Stephen sighed as he regarded her. After

all, was it a woman he loved, with a warm human heart to respond to

his own; or a careless mermaid, a cold creature, whose sole joy was

thus dancing, plunging, flashing through the foam of the white, curling

waves?

So far as he could judge, there was no real affection in her heart

except this for her friend, the sea. Toward her mother, a heavy, placid

woman with literary pretensions, Elfrida was kind in an impersonal,

far-off sort of way; to the other girls in the hotel--who respected her

for her high dives and hated her for her monopoly of the few men at

Pemaquid--she seemed indifferent, with a kind of mocking politeness;

while toward her little court of admirers she showed a capricious

tyranny, at times almost savage. To these things even the adoring eyes

of Stephen Glyn could not be blind; and one day when, owing to a severe

headache of her mother’s, she was obliged to forego her swim, and

appeared at dinner a muttering thundercloud, it was impossible for even

the most ardent of adorers to pass by these signs without a sigh.

True, she had shown a tender heart toward the lifeless cod and hake;

and sometimes, as she looked at the sea, in the uproar of a summer

squall or in the silvery silence of a fog, Glyn would be startled by

the look that suddenly crept into her eyes.

“Ah!” she breathed one evening, as they sat together watching the

sunset from the pier. “Ah, it wouldn’t be hard to die, would it, if

one could lie at the bottom of the sea?” Glyn grunted uncomfortably in

answer, and tried to look as though he agreed with this sentiment.

The next day, when they were out canoeing together, Elfrida surprised

him by reverting suddenly to one of the first conversations of their

acquaintance. “You said you were going to tell me about Undine,” she

said, “but you haven’t--not a word.”

Glyn sighed as he regarded her. She had been unusually tantalizing,

not to say aggravating, that afternoon, and his honest heart was sore

within him. But what better mood, what better occasion, for relating

the story of the unfortunate water nymph, from the time she first

appeared in the hut of the old fisherman, a light-hearted, soulless

child, to the unhappy hour when, abandoned by the man she loved, she

vanished silently into her native element--“a woman gifted with a

soul, filled with love and heir to suffering.”

It was but recently that Stephen had read the story, and he told it

well, for, though a lawyer, he was in love, and he had a poetical soul.

Elfrida listened in silence, her face turned away, her hand trailing in

the still water beside her. After the story-teller had finished, there

was a pause.

“Well,” said Stephen, disappointed, “didn’t you like it?”

Elfrida glanced up at him--a quick, irresolute glance, quite unlike

her usual frank gaze. She seemed about to speak, but to Glyn’s

disappointment she turned away her head again, so that her face was

hidden from him. With her trailing hand she drew a long, dripping spray

of brown seaweed from the water.

“What did Undine gain, after all,” she said, “by leaving the sea?”

“She learned how to love, and she won a soul,” responded Stephen,

leaning toward her. “Don’t you think that she was the gainer, after

all?”

She suddenly flung away the seaweed. “No, I don’t!” she cried,

passionately. “In the sea she had freedom and happiness! But love--what

did she find it, after all, but a miserable slavery? And she got her

heart broken in the end. No, indeed, you can’t make me pity her--she

was just silly, your Undine!”

Nothing more was spoken as they paddled to the shore. Glyn was hurt,

disappointed; and Elfrida kept her face still turned away.

The next morning, however, Glyn was more disappointed than ever; for

when he came down to breakfast he failed to find the one face that he

desired to see. From Mrs. May he learned that Elfrida had gone out for

a day’s sail with young Martin and two or three others. So he moped

about all day, smoking and trying to read his “Dairy Machinery,” now

sadly rusty. And from time to time he was drawn unwillingly into the

universal discussion on costumes for the coming dance and masquerade.

Toward evening Elfrida and her companions returned. In spite of her

day’s amusement, her face wore its severe expression, and she glanced

at him without a smile as she passed him on the piazza.

“You’ve been here all day, I suppose,” she said, with an inflection of

resentment in her tone. “Just think, a great big man like you afraid to

go into the sea!”

Before Glyn could open his mouth to defend himself she was gone. But

after dinner she came to him with a shy, suspicious air, and a touch of

mystery that was explained by her first words.

“See here,” she said, softly, “this masquerade. I’ve been thinking it

over, and I think if I can manage it, I want to go as Undine, you know.”

Stephen was filled with delight. “And you’ll let me help plan your

dress?” he cried.

Elfie nodded, and offered her ideas on the subject to the approval

of his authority. The young man listened, offered suggestions here

and there, and then, with a sudden backward thought, he remembered

a trinket in his possession--a little pearl bracelet, a trifle, but

beyond anything appropriate to the costume in hand. Within himself he

resolved to send home immediately for it, and to present it to Elfrida

on the night of the dance.

In the days that followed it seemed to him that he saw strangely little

of her, and the little that he did see was less than satisfactory. Her

absence from the piazza, and her refusals to go paddling with him, she

excused on the plea of being busy with her new costume. But even on the

pier at the bathing hour she seemed to shun him, or noticed him only

with jeers and gibes at what she called his laziness.

“Ah, can anybody have a soul that is afraid of the sea?” she cried.

“Come, Mr. Martin, let us race over to the monument!” With a splash and

a flounce the two set out together, the green bathing dress and the

triumphant blue; while Glyn sat alone on the wharf with a leaden heart

and rage at his soul.

This state of affairs had very little altered when at last the day of

the dance arrived. A hundred times in the interim had Stephen resolved

to give up the whole affair and go home; but then he decided to wait

and see this new Undine in the flesh. To his anxiety, the bracelet had

not yet arrived; nor did it come until the last post on the evening

of the dance, after everybody had gone upstairs to dress. In joyful

relief, Stephen slipped the little box in the pocket of his improvised

admiral’s costume, and ran downstairs to the hall to wait for the

coming of his Undine.

Elfrida did not appear till late, when the room was filled with

whirling harlequins and Pompadours and Swiss peasant maidens. The

admiral stood by the door, waiting for her, his little box in his

hand and his heart in his mouth. Finally, as though she had been on

the watch to avoid him, he saw her enter the hall by one of the long

windows opening from the veranda without. In spite of his vexation, he

could not but smile with sheer pleasure at the sight of her, as her

eyes and her white teeth flashed a smile upon the room. In her pale,

sea-green draperies, dragging heavily at the hem with a fragile border

of urchin shells, her creamy neck and shoulders bare, her flowing

yellow hair bound and wreathed with strands of dark, wet seaweed--oh,

she was pretty, indeed! Stephen sprang forward.

“Good-evening, Undine! Here--I have something for you, will you let me

give it to you? A little ornament to complete your costume.”

“You may give it to me later,” she replied, with an indifference that

chilled and baffled him; and he watched her miserably as she swung

off into the two-step with a tall, sunburned youth from Boston--a

conceited-looking pup, Glyn told himself, in a vain attempt at

consolation.

The evening was half over before he managed to get near her again. “Our

dance, Mr. Glyn,” she cried, taking his arm and smiling up at him. Her

eyebrows, which, in spite of her fair hair, were black and thickly

ridged, were arched high in the mocking expression that he hated to see

upon her face. She was in wild spirits, gay with the evening’s success,

fluttered with a reckless and inconsequent laughter that set the

fibers of her lover’s heart quivering painfully.

“Let’s go down on the breakwater,” she said, “instead of dancing. It’s

so hot here.” Bewildered and obedient, Stephen followed her, and a few

moments later they were sitting side by side at the end of the moonlit

pier.

“Doesn’t the water look nice?” cried Elfie, bending over it lovingly.

“For two cents, I’d jump into it this very moment.”

“Please don’t!” expostulated Stephen, in alarm. She turned her bright

eyes toward him.

“What did you say you had for me?” she said.

Half shamefacedly, Stephen drew from his pocket the little box that

he had received a few hours before. “Just a trifle,” he said, “that

I picked up in Swabia a few years ago. See!” He opened the cover and

took out a slender string of fresh-water pearls set in silver, some

milk-white, some shimmering prismatically in the moonlight.

“Oh, how lovely!” cried Elfie, with artless delight. “And they’re for

me?”

“If you’ll take them,” replied Stephen, hurriedly. “You see, they are

perfectly valueless little things--but the reason I wanted you to wear

them was because, you see, they really belong to you. These pearls are

found in one of the headwaters of the Danube, in Undine’s own country.

The peasants say they are the drops that Undine wept after she had

returned heartbroken to her water world. And so they call these pearls

the tears of Undine. Will you have them, Undine?”

He bent toward her tenderly, and she held out her hand with a

constrained gesture. “This Undine doesn’t intend to shed any tears

of her own,” she answered, “and so, I suppose, that these drops will

save her a lot of trouble. Thanks! Yes, do clasp it on. Thank you very

much.” She tried to pull her hand away, but Stephen retained it in his

own.

“I love you. Don’t you care a bit for me, Elfie?” he blurted,

desperately. “Elfie, will you be my wife?”

She snatched her hand away this time, and scrambled to her feet. “Oh,”

she cried, “_don’t_ be silly, _don’t_ be sentimental--here by the

lovely, sensible sea, too!” Stephen rose and stood staring at her, and

she went on with a hurried laugh: “Thank you very much, Mr. Glyn, and

now that I have had a proposal, I shall always be a bachelor-lady, and

shan’t ever have to worry about being an old maid. And the pearls are

lovely, but I never intend to marry anyone--and now, oh, _do_ let’s go

into that dear black water.”

She stood, a lovely, pale figure in the moonlight, embarrassed,

half-laughing, while her green eyes shot out and streamed a reckless

gleam at the young man standing dejected before her. “Do you dare me?”

she cried.

Stephen saw that in her present daredevil mood she was equal to

anything. “No, please don’t!” he cried. “This time of night, in all

those long draperies, it wouldn’t be safe--please don’t!”

“Not safe for Undine?” she laughed, defiantly. “Pooh, who’s afraid?”

Stephen put out his hand to restrain her, but she laughed again--one of

her long, silent chuckles. “Such a grand chance to show off. I’m not

going to miss it!” she cried, and, eluding Stephen’s touch, she sprang

like a long, silvery streak over the edge of the breakwater into the

phosphorescent blackness beneath. In wrath and anxiety, the young man

waited until her head emerged in a whirlpool of silvery fire.

“You are quite safe, Elfie?” he called, anxiously.

Her wild, careless laughter answered him. “Come in, the water’s fine.

Come in; oh, come in! I dare you! I dare you!”

She swam off toward the moonlight with powerful side strokes, hardly

diminished by her encumbering drapery. “I dare you!” she cried again.

No flesh and blood, not even of the most prudent young lawyer in New

York, could withstand such a challenge. Heedless of consequences,

Stephen flung himself over into the dark. The water was cold, his

clothes were heavy; but he struck out valiantly. “Come on, oh, come

on!” called the voice, far away on the surface of the water, and he

strained every tendon to follow. A canoe drifted out slowly from

somewhere--he didn’t know where--then it seemed to draw nearer, or

else to disappear--he didn’t know which. The water was icy cold, his

breath drew thick, his limbs, unaccustomed either to the cold or to

the unwonted strain, were wrenched with a sudden muscular agony, and

seemed to pass from his ownership and his control. Still, in the white

moonlight before him, the black streak that he was following moved

steadily along. He cursed himself as an effeminate monkey--“beaten by a

girl!”

Then girls and Undines, farming implements and crystal palaces, whirled

and shimmered dimly before his eyes. All he wanted was to rest--just

a chance to rest! And, throwing out both arms, he gave himself up

helplessly to the water.

II.

It was late the next morning when Martin thrust his cheerful little

face in at the door of Stephen Glyn’s room at the hotel.

“Well, how are you to-day?” cried the newcomer. “Gee, that was a narrow

squeak you had last night, and no mistake!”

Stephen woke with a start, and turned in a dim and growing amazement

at the stiffness of his limbs, the painful heaviness of his breath.

Slowly, as the little Yale man sat chattering by his bed, the troubled

events of the night before came back to him--the foolhardy plunge

from the breakwater, the interval of blank nothingness, the agonized

struggle back into life, the hands working at his chest and his limbs;

then the slow opening of his eyelids under the frightened face of young

Martin, bending over him.

“Yes, I did make an ass of myself, and no mistake,” he mused, aloud, in

a hoarse and broken voice.

“Nonsense!” cried Martin. “A cramp--why, that’s likely to come over

anybody. No one could laugh at you for having a cramp; though Miss

May----” he stopped short, with a half-embarrassed laugh.

“What about Miss May?” asked Stephen, trying to conceal the agitation

he felt.

“Why, nothing. Only, I met her just now going out to sail with some

of the fellows. They all stopped to ask how you were. She didn’t say

a word--stood there looking queer, somehow. So I told them you were

feeling better this morning with all the water pumped out of you; and

she began to laugh; didn’t say a word, just stood and laughed, till,

upon my word, I thought she was going to cry. She’s a funny one and no

mistake--half fish, I call her.”

Glyn was silent. So this was the way that his narrow escape from

drowning appeared to Elfrida--to her for whom he had risked not only

his life, but his dignity as well.

“Can I do anything for you, old chap?” asked the other, with

good-natured solicitude.

“Thanks, I think you have done quite enough for me already.”

“Pshaw!” cried Martin, rising in the alarm of approaching thanks. “It

was nothing. And now I’ve got to be going downstairs. As for you, my

boy, you’d better lie still to-day. You don’t want to get pneumonia out

of this, do you?”

But in spite of timely warnings, in spite of aching limbs and a dizzy

head, it was not very long after this that Stephen rose, dressed

himself and went slowly downstairs. From the few people sitting about

on the piazza waiting for lunch--ladies with toy poodles, old gentlemen

with newspapers--Glyn received congratulations on his escape, and

remarks of a more or less trying facetiousness. Of course Elfrida was

not there; of course she had not yet returned from her sail. And even

if she had, what difference should it make to him?

So he strolled down on the rocks toward the breakwater with a rather

slow and uncertain step. His heart was sore within him. The future

was dim; in the present, one fact only stood out with dreary

distinctness--he had given the best love of his life where return was

not only denied, but, from the nature of things, impossible. As well

toss a rose in a monkey cage as bestow a living heart on a perverse and

freakish child like Elfrida, who regarded the gift merely as the means

of a moment’s amusement, to be picked to pieces and then tossed to the

ground. After all, was she a woman, or, as Martin had said, a wild

creature, half human and half fish, for the possession of whom it was

useless to contend with her cold and tempestuous lover, the sea?

He caught himself almost shaking his fist in a helpless rage of

jealousy at the little green waves that lapped at his feet. “Rubbish!”

he said to himself, in scorn at the fanciful absurdity of his notion.

But then, as the scene of last night came back to him, he shook his

head in mournful bewilderment.

A light clatter of stones on the breakwater above his head roused him

from his reverie. Looking up, he saw a white figure hurrying silently

along. “Good-morning,” he called, with a wild hope that his thoughts

had translated themselves into the wild, living embodiment. There was

no answer. “Miss May, is that you?” he called again.

There was a moment’s pause, then Elfrida’s face, white and severe,

appeared over the stone coping. “I didn’t intend that you should hear

me pass,” she said, frowning. “It was these hateful old stones that

gave me away.”

Glyn’s heart contracted. Was his presence so disagreeable to her,

then, that she chid the very stones that betrayed her presence to

him? Then concern for his own pain was lost in sudden concern for the

unsteadiness of her position.

“Take care, please! Those stones are loose where you are standing, I

can see from below here.”

She smiled willfully. “Thank you, Mr. Glyn, I am quite secure. You see,

this breakwater is a friend of mine. It would never go back on _me_.”

In her words, as in her smile, Glyn found an echo of that laughter

with which earlier in the day she had greeted Martin’s story of his

narrow encounter with death. “Yes,” he replied, with a bitter sinking

of the heart, “I did make rather an ass of myself last night, didn’t I?”

She laughed abruptly, but made no reply. Glyn stood looking up at her

as she stood on the barrier of loose stones above his head--shading her

eyes with the book that she held in her hand, looking out over the sea.

A sense of his own helplessness rocked Glyn’s soul in a sudden rage. He

wanted her, oh, he wanted her, as she stood there, cold and immovable,

defended at every point by her own scornful ignorance of common human

emotion, unassailed even by the twin lords of mankind, Love and Death,

which had so newly brushed closely past her.

Suddenly she started and turned to meet his gaze with half-startled,

inscrutable eyes. “The tide is on the turn,” she said, in a

quick-breathed undertone--then the stone under her foot slipped and

settled, she flung out her arms to steady herself, and barely recovered

her balance as she swayed for an instant on the edge of the rough stone

parapet. In wild anxiety Glyn sprang forward, heedless of her book,

which fell fluttering past his head.

“Take care!” he cried. “Take care!”

She smiled down at him, her lips a little white, but otherwise

perfectly composed. “It’s too bad,” she said. “From the first day I met

you, I am always frightening you to death, Mr. Glyn.”

Was she thinking of his failure of the night before? Glyn’s heart

quivered with mortification. “Yes,” he said; “it’s easy to frighten me,

you see.”

She laughed again--a little, quick, troubled laugh. “But I didn’t come

down here to see you, you know, Mr. Glyn,” she said. “I was going out

on the end of the breakwater to read for a little while, till lunch

time--I didn’t expect to see you, you know.”

Why need she disclaim so eagerly any wish to see him? thought Glyn to

himself. Not much danger of his flattering himself to the contrary. So

he bowed with as much composure as he could muster.

“Certainly,” he replied; “and I am very sorry to have intruded upon

your solitude. But let me see, your book--it fell past me just now, I

think.”

He turned to search among the bowlders which lay strewed about him.

Suddenly Elfrida’s voice came to him, strained and high.

“Mr. Glyn,” she said, “please don’t take any trouble about my book.”

He paused, perplexed. “It’s no trouble, Miss May, I assure you. Look! I

can see it there between the bowlders in the seaweed--a new book, isn’t

it? Here, let me give it to you.”

He took a step toward it. “Mr. Glyn!” cried Elfrida. “You mustn’t--you

mustn’t! I forbid you to touch my book!”

Glyn turned and gazed up at her. She was leaning down toward him from

the rough masonry above, her hands stretched out, her face flushed to

a bright crimson, her eyes sparkling, wide open, filled with anger and

with something else besides--misgiving and something that was almost

like fear.

“Mr. Glyn!” she repeated, violently. “Please go away now, please! And

let me come down and pick up my book myself!”

Glyn looked up at her, at her face, wild, beautiful and threatening,

bent down toward him. So her scorn for him was so deep, her detestation

so entire, that he was not to be permitted to touch so much as the book

that had fallen from her hand.

Now, at last, beyond a doubt, he had his answer. He stood silent

for a moment, looking dumbly first at the half-soaked volume almost

hidden among the seaweed, then at the head above him, so lovely and so

carelessly terrible, bright and golden against the blue background of

the sky.

“Miss May,” he said, “believe me, I had no intention of intruding on

you. I beg your pardon, and--good-by, Elfie!”

* * * * *

Now, the solitary steamer that calls at Pemaquid makes her single trip

in the morning; the overland route to the distant railway station is

so hilly and rough as to be almost impossible to the few aged horses in

the village; hence there are difficulties in the way of anybody who is

resolved to take his departure from Pemaquid immediately after lunch.

“It’s too bad,” drawled old Ben, in sympathetic reply to Stephen’s

eager inquiries, “but, you see, down East here nobody ain’t ever in a

hurry. We hev all the time they is. In the West, of course, I know it’s

different. I suppose, naow, in N’ York you have a train every hour in

the day, don’t you?”

Stephen stood helpless. To remain another day in Pemaquid, after what

had happened, was to him an impossibility; and yet how to escape? His

eye fell on a small fishing schooner at the end of the wharf, the only

boat of seagoing size that the place boasted. Her sails were hoisted

and two men were working at her anchor. A sudden idea came to Stephen.

“Couldn’t I hire that boat,” he said, “to sail me over to Boothbay

Harbor?”

Old Ben began to laugh. “Couldn’t you hire a whale?” he said. “That

boat, she’s the _Twin Sisters_, and she belongs to my brother-in-law,

Jabez Hooper, and he’s sot in his ways, like the old monument over

there. This is the day he’s goin’ swordfishin’ in her; and now he’s

p’inted her nose for ’Tit Menan, it would take more money than you

could find in six pots o’ gold to git him to p’int her to the west’ard

for you instead.”

Stephen grasped eagerly at the idea. A few more weeks away from his

work--what did it matter now, after all, in the emptiness of the dog

days? “Swordfishing? Just the thing! Do you think he’d take me with

him?”

“_As_ a passenger?” asked the cautious Ben.

“A passenger? Certainly. I’ll pay him anything in reason.”

To this proposition the old longshoreman gave a grudging and

indifferent assent; then gleefully pushed out in a dory to arrange

terms with his relative and wrangle about the amount of commission

which his own enterprise was to receive; while Stephen went back to

the hotel to pack up a few necessaries for the trip and arrange with

the landlady for the storage of his luggage till his return.

A hurried inquiry brought forth the information that Martin had gone

out sailing, together with most of the others. “Miss May, she’s gone,

too,” remarked the woman, with the faint and flickering ghost of a

smile. “They’ll all be _real_ sorry to find you turn up missin’ when

they come back, I’m sure of that.”

Glyn left a hastily scribbled note for Martin, and hurried down to the

pier, with strength restored to his limbs and hope to his heart by

this unlooked for and novel means of escape. On the deck of this rough

fishing boat he might escape from the fancied chains which had weighed

him down to the unmanly servitude here in Pemaquid. Here on the sea

he might find “the world of men for a man”; the world of hand-to-hand

struggle with forces unchanged since the earth was made; the wind, the

water, the sharp necessities of the chase. Here, if anywhere, was the

path of deliverance from the chimera of Unfulfilled Desire.

III.

It was nearly three weeks later that the _Twin Sisters_ rounded

Allen’s Island--traveling, as her skipper said, “with a bone in her

mouth”--and set her homeward course across the windy and sparkling

waters of Muscongus Bay. In the stern the steersman flung his weight on

the wheel; in the bow lay Stephen, his hand closed upon the helplessly

fluttering leaves of his “Dairy Machinery,” his eyes fixed upon the

mound of glittering green foam that swept in perpetual advance of the

vessel’s bow.

Through his mind flitted a shifting retrospect of these last weeks upon

the sea--the rushing voyage through rock-sown bays and windy fairways;

the days of creaking rise-and-fall upon the heavy swell of a dead

and scorching sea, or of groping for buoys through the blind white

fog; nights under the starlight, nights when the wild summer rain had

driven him for shelter to the hot and evil-smelling cabin of the little

schooner. And, above all, the ceaseless watch for the great fish that

they had come to hunt, the tense excitement of the signal, the swift

dark flight of the harpoon; then the breathless chase of the flying

keg that marked the flight of the frenzied monster across the sea.

In their wild hunts Stephen had shown a reckless audacity, a rapidly

acquired skill, that gradually commanded the respect of the cynical and

indifferent Captain Jabez himself. “Y’ain’t so bad, for a rusticator,”

was his outspoken praise. Stephen sighed in helpless irritation; after

all, what was the use of pretending to himself that it was the respect

of his fellow man for which he exerted himself in these strenuous

exertions to show nautical strength and skill? What was the use, after

all, of leaving Pemaquid at all, so long as the very sea foam itself

brought him a fantastic vision of white arms flashing from the water,

and each curling green wave recalled to him a pair of eyes deeper and

more transparent than the sea itself?

“Spoony!” hissed Stephen, in fierce self-contempt, when suddenly the

skipper raised a languid cry from the stern.

“There’s the old p’int, Stephen, if you want to see it.”

Sure enough, there were the high brown walls of Pemaquid, bare to the

wind and the surrounding ocean. In spite of himself, Stephen’s heart

leaped up as he regarded it.

The wind calmed down with the approaching sunset as the _Twin Sisters_

floated slowly in between the breakwaters, recalling to Stephen that

first evening when his boat had been met and boarded by a wandering sea

nymph. This time the mirrored sunset was empty and bare, the harbor was

silent.

“Reckon they’re all busy with their fried lobster an’ hot biscuit, up

to the hotel,” remarked Captain Jabez, sourly, as he surveyed their

catch, laid out upon the deck--seven great swordfishes, black and

shapeless, like elongated kitchen stoves, their skin still glistening

from their icy bed in the vessel’s hold. “I thought we’d git a dozen,”

he remarked, discontentedly. “Mind, I tell you, it’s just my luck. A

catch like that makes me feel like all my folks was sick to home.”

Suddenly from the end of the breakwater a white figure started up, her

eyes shielded with a book, her hair reddened brilliantly by the sinking

sun.

“For the law’s sakes!” exclaimed Captain Jabez. “See, there’s

what’s-her-name, the fish girl, waitin’ to see us land!”

Stephen turned; the world was warm and smiling. Was she really waiting

for him? He waved his hat and cried to her. For a moment she stood,

white, slim and motionless; then, with a single gesture, lifeless and

perfunctory, she turned and walked slowly up to the hotel.

“Of course,” said Stephen to himself, in vain mockery at his own pain.

After all, what did it matter? Tomorrow he would leave it forever, this

cold and alluring coast of Maine; and with paved streets and the rush

of work would come forgetfulness.

Martin welcomed him warmly at the hotel. “Gee, you’re as brown as

a nut,” he said, “and old Jabez says you’re the best hand he ever

had--worth any two of these native loafers about here. Say, come and

sit at my table, and tell us about your trip.”

So, after Glyn had changed to the garb of civilization, he came down

and ate his supper, listening to the merry chatter of the little Yale

man. Elfrida bowed to him as he entered, but left the table soon after

he sat down. “I am going down to the breakwater, to look at those poor

swordfish that you killed,” she said, with some reproach, as she passed

by him. Her face was severe and unsmiling; it seemed to Glyn that she

was paler than usual, and her large eyes were faintly shadowed with

dark circles beneath their lids.

“What’s the matter with Miss May?” he asked Martin, abruptly.

The other turned his eyes from her retreating figure. “Oh, yes, I

forgot you’d been away. We’ve had great excitements since you were

gone, here at little Pemaquid.”

“What was the matter?” cried Stephen, while a thousand terrible

possibilities rose in his mind.

Martin began to laugh. “Oh, nothing very thrilling, that I could see.

But that girl--you know she’s a queen, but she’s half a freak, too--the

good half! Anyone that tries to understand her will have his job cut

out for life.”

Glyn raised his cup of tea carelessly. “But what did you say it was

that happened?”

“Why, this is the way it was--see if it doesn’t make you tired!

Everybody was talking about it. You remember that time last month when

you came so near your end, going in with her the night of the dance,

she never made a sound. And last week, when she lost a little trifling

bracelet in swimming--gee! she burst out crying right there on the pier

before everybody!”

A wild thought flitted into Stephen’s mind. “What kind of a bracelet

was it?” he inquired, with elaborate indifference.

“Nothing very much, to make a girl cry like that--a girl like Elfie,

too, the cold, superior, athletic kind. But, then, she’d been acting

queer for some time, didn’t you notice? No, it was since you went

away--nervous and quiet, and ready to snap your head off if you spoke

to her, always sitting down there on the breakwater, reading--Elfie

reading! Just fancy that! Gee! I never saw a girl change so quick

before.”

Stephen went on with his supper. “Well, did she find her bracelet?” he

inquired, carelessly.

“After the harbor was turned inside out--that’s the excitement, you

see. The whole town was out every day. Then she offered a reward--fifty

dollars; then a hundred. She wanted to send to Portland for divers.

But an old native chap found it at low tide--old Ben, you know, that

is always fishing there on the dock. So she paid him, on the nail--a

hundred plunks. And her mother said she couldn’t have any autumn

clothes, and she said she didn’t care one scrap.”

Stephen lit a cigarette with elaborate pains. “So, I suppose,” he

observed, tentatively, “that it was quite an elaborate bit of jewelry.”

“That’s the joke. A hundred dollars would have bought a dozen like

it--just clam pearls and silver. Say, it’s a peachy evening. Let’s go

and look up some of the crowd, and have a marshmallow toast on the

beach.”

Glyn rose. “I’m sorry, Martin, I have to go down and help my skipper

ashore with our catch. See you later--business, you see.”

“Three cheers for the bold fisherman!” grinned Martin, as Stephen

rushed from the hall with an eagerness which did credit to his sense of

duty toward Jabez.

Twilight was drawing down, damp and dusky, over rocks and harbor, as

Stephen hurried down to the breakwater. With swift precaution, he

stepped along over the loose stones--no one was there. He looked about

in desperate search. Then, in a little rocky nook at the extreme point,

he caught the glint of a familiar yellow head.

“Elfie!” he called, softly, as he hastened toward her. Her white

form rose up; she stood there looking at him, her book still in her

hand--looking at him silently.

As he joined her she laughed, a little, nervous laugh. “Oh, Mr. Glyn,

is that you?” she said. “And have you come to tell me about your

cruise?”

For a moment Stephen stood at a loss. Here before those clear cool

eyes, what Martin had told him seemed so absurd, so impossible. His

eyes fell upon the book in her hand. Suddenly, as he read the title in

the fading light, his heart beat again high and quick.

He put out his hand and gently took the volume from her. “I see that

you have been reading about Undine,” he said, tentatively.

She flushed a bright rose color; it was the second time he had ever

seen her color change. “Ah!” she cried, in a pale reflection of her old

mocking defiance. “The story you told me about--I’m sorry, you know,

but, really, I don’t find it very interesting.”

Stephen looked at her. “Elfie----” he said, but she stretched out

her hand in sudden embarrassment. “Give it back to me, please,” she

whispered. “I didn’t mean to be reading it now. Give it to me, please.”

For a moment Stephen stared at her, bewildered at this sudden intensity

of appeal. With her old impulsiveness, she flung out her arm to snatch

the betraying volume from his grasp. The laces of her sleeve fell back,

and there about her wrist Stephen beheld a bracelet--a string of large,

irregular pearls, rimmed and linked in silver.

He dropped the book and seized the hand in both of his own.

“So you still think of me sometimes, Elfie?”

She glanced up at him, frowning.

“Why did you go away without saying good-by to me last month?” she

asked, with her old air of severity.

“I didn’t want to bother you. I knew you didn’t care.” Beneath the

rigid inquisition of her gaze, Stephen stumbled over his words.

“You thought I didn’t care!” She turned her eyes away from him, and

twisted the bracelet upon her wrist. “Do _you_ care?” she asked,

abruptly.

“Elfrida, you know why I had to come back. You know that I care about

nothing else in the world but just you--dear, dearest little Elfie!”

She stepped back. “And yet,” she said, with a catch in her voice, “you

went away and left me.”

“But, Elfie dear, what else could I do? After you had laughed at me,

after you had refused to let me touch as much as your book when you

dropped it here on the beach!”

She began to laugh brokenly. “Don’t you understand?” she said, softly.

“I wasn’t going to let you know how silly I was. I couldn’t let you see

that I had sent for the book for myself--just because I wanted to read

again the story that you had told to me.”

“Elfie! My own dear Elfie!”

She raised her hand. “No, Stephen, one moment! Listen to me.” She

leaned toward him a little, standing there white and slender in the

gathering dusk, while Stephen listened eagerly. The little waves lapped

and gurgled through the rocky spaces of the breakwater; all about them

was the quiet evening of the sea.

“Last month, when you told me about Undine, I hated you,” she said,

passionately; “because I thought you meant that she was _me_, all the

time. And I was bound to show you that I wasn’t weak and silly like

that, and that I didn’t care a single scrap! And I didn’t care then,

either--not till that night when I was such a beast to you, and made

such a fool of myself, and you almost died--all my fault! So next day I

was so ashamed of myself, I didn’t dare even to speak to you, until I

had told you I was sorry. And just then I was so afraid you’d see that

book, that I made you go away--little fool! As though _that_ made any

difference!” She paused a moment. “And then in the evening I came back

and found that you were really gone away, without a single word!”

She raised her eyes to him slowly, and, to his amazement, he saw that

they were bright with the transparent wetness of tears.

“Do you remember,” she whispered, brokenly, “how--that night--I told

you that I never intended to shed any tears--planning to live like a

little brute? And you gave me these pearls, and told me they were the

tears that Undine had wept, after her soul had been given to her. Oh,

Stephen! There’s not a night since that night that I haven’t cried

myself to sleep thinking of you. So now I know that I have a soul, and

I have a heart. And the heart is all yours, if you want it, Stephen!”

[Illustration]

NOW’S THE TIME O’ YEAR

Now’s the time o’ year when the deep skies seem

(Look where you will) like the dream of a dream;

Toss of gold, floss of gold, weed-tip and tree,

And purple like the twilight for the lone late bee.

Now’s the time o’ year when the cider-stills run

Amber--luscious amber--in the round red sun;

And the bloom on the grape’s like the bloom on the cheeks

Of a maid at the tryst when a low voice speaks.

Now’s the time o’ year when the hill-crests call,

And the clear rill-music has a tinkling fall;

Piper of the South Wind, play up, play!

Your hand in mine, love, let us away!

CLINTON SCOLLARD.

PRIDE of RACE

By P. S. Carlson

[Illustration]

At luncheon Bishop Chalmers, ensconced snugly between his hostess,

the handsome widow, Mrs. Patricia Danvers, and her equally charming

daughter, Miss Isabel, sublimated from the seclusion of boarding school

to society two seasons before, listened quietly to the many laudatory

comments on his sermon of the previous evening.

The sermon had been delivered in the large and fashionable city church

of St. Barnabas. Ostensibly it had been on “Charity”; principally it

was a plea for aid for the bishop’s struggling diocese in the South.

The bishop had received the invitation to preach from the rector of

the rich congregation, a classmate at the theological seminary, who

occupied a seat at the left of the hostess.

The rector was wifeless, as was the bishop, and after Mrs. Danvers had

satisfied herself that she had paid due deference to the bishop she

left him to the tender mercies of the daughter.

Mrs. Danvers, Patricia Hardesty that was, had begun life with a

devotion to the church, especially its representatives in this mundane

sphere. Her impoverished family, painfully aware that dollars were

far scarcer than devotion, insisted on her giving up her maidenly

intention of wedding a clergyman and urged on her the necessity of

marrying Horace Danvers, by no means religious, many years her senior

and “interested in cotton.” Now that the cotton had been shelved for

all time by the death of the husband, leaving a magnificent golden

fleece in its stead, her devotion to “the cloth” had reasserted itself.

Witness the bishop as a guest, the presence of the rector.

To the mind of the widow, worldly-minded, even if a devotee, the rector

was the far more desirable prospective _parti_. The bishop was too

small to fit her ideal. Her fancy was for large blond men who, in the

pulpit, have the appearance of Greek gods brought up to date by the

saving grace of the surplice. The rector was one of these.

Although Bishop Chalmers was below medium height, with anything but a

robust figure, he had a striking face. It was clean-shaven, ascetic and

of cameo-like clearness. The nose itself was indicative of ancestry,

the mouth was sensitive yet strong, and his blue eyes were remarkable

for their depth and expression of sadness. His silvery gray hair belied

his age, not yet fifty years. Pride of vocation and of race showed

itself in every feature.

The adoring women of his diocese were accustomed to describe the bishop

as one who was never known to smile.

“When his wife died he lost interest in everything but his life work,”

they were accustomed to say. “He reveres her memory as that of a saint.

Her death cast a shadow over his life, poor little bishop!”

That was not the underlying cause of his sadness. In the ecclesiastical

closet--a sanctum the interior of which none might see--a skeleton was

concealed.

As Mrs. Danvers glanced to her right with uninterrupted speech to the

rector, she smiled with satisfaction to see that the daughter was

cleverly holding the attention of the distinguished guest.

The girl had taken up the subject-thread of conversation where her

mother had dropped it.

“In your sermon I was greatly impressed by the story you told of the

unknown donor who each year sent you the large sum of money for your

diocesan work,” she was saying. “It appears so strange that anyone

should wish to conceal identity where such good work is concerned. You

have no intimation as to his or her identity?” she asked.

The bishop shook his head.

“Not the slightest. The nearest I have approached is to learn the name

of the bankers through whom the annual donation is made. It is a good

seed sown in a fruitful field, and some day the sower will reap harvest

an hundredfold,” he declared, reverently.

Of course Miss Isobel was properly impressed. She said nothing for a

little. She was a bright, butterfly sort of creature, whose veil of

innocence and apparent ingenuousness hid a nature which delighted in

sacrificing dignity and reserve to her mischief-making propensities.

She was of the kind ever ready to revert to the subject of round dances

or divorce with a High Church dignitary.

This idiosyncrasy asserted itself when she said to her listener, with

her well-feigned air of irresponsibility:

“Bishop, I should greatly like to have the pleasure of taking you this

afternoon for a spin in my runabout, had I not an engagement to see the

Derby run. Besides my promise to go, my favorite jockey is to ride in

this race, and I cannot miss the chance of winning or losing kid gloves

or bonbons on his horse. I suppose it is very sinful,” she sighed,

resignedly, glancing with challenging eyes at the bishop.

Emboldened, though disappointed, perhaps, by the fact that he did

not appear shocked or surprised, she continued in a tone wherein

earnestness and raillery were mingled:

“Could you reconcile your conscience so far as to accompany me to such

a sinful place as the race course, bishop?”

For a time, so long that the silence grew painful, the bishop made

no sign that he had heard. She noted a look on his face--was it one

of offended dignity or simple disgust at her daring? She could not

determine. Already she had framed an apology, when he said, without

lifting his eyes:

“Is it really so sinful?” continuing, quickly: “I do not doubt that it

is, and, perhaps, it may strike you as being strange and unworthy of my

calling, but for just once I should like to see the inside of a race

course.”

For some reason the statement struck a chord of sympathy in the girl’s

heart. It was in the nature of a confession.

“It is a beautiful sight, bishop,” she hastened to reply, thinking

of nothing less inane as her mind struggled to find reason for his

admission. “The horses, with their coats like satin, the jockeys in

their bright colors, the excited throng of spectators and the velvety

greensward. One jockey is a special favorite among the girls of the

‘horsy’ set,” she continued, now fairly advanced in her stride,

figuratively speaking. “He’s a darling!”--ecstatically. “I surely

believe half the women attend the races simply to see him ride, and

all of them make wagers on his mounts.” She paused for a moment and

glanced at the bishop. He did not appear offended. “When his horse

wins and he returns to the judges’ stand they cheer him and wave their

handkerchiefs, and some even throw kisses at him. He doesn’t notice it,

though, for he never even smiles, but only looks up at the Blaisdell

box.”

“Blaisdell?” echoed the bishop.

“Yes, ex-Secretary Blaisdell. Rumor says that Bettina Blaisdell wants

to marry him, but, of course, the family couldn’t countenance such a

thing--her becoming the wife of a jockey. It is reported he is of an

excellent family, however, and rides under a _nom de course_.”

“And this name--what is it?” inquired the bishop, scarcely above a

whisper. Feverishly, almost, he appeared to wait for an answer.

“Nowell--of course it is an assumed one----”

She would have said more, but the words were checked on her lips, and

she was staring at her companion in undisguised astonishment. His head

was bowed over, and the hand, one finger of which held the episcopal

ring, was trembling violently. In a moment he had regained composure.

“Tell me of this race,” he said, in his accustomed well modulated

voice. “Does this--jockey”--the word came with an effort--“ride for Mr.

Blaisdell altogether? Is it the Blaisdell who was once in the Cabinet?”

Eagerness was evinced in his voice, his expression, the attitude in

which he leaned toward his fair informant.

“Ex-Secretary Blaisdell--the one formerly in the senate, you know.

He is more interested in the ponies now than in politics,” she said,

dropping unconsciously into slang. “He was thinking of selling off all

his race horses, when he discovered this jockey, who is said to get a

princely salary. Mr. Blaisdell treats him almost as a son.”

The bishop winced.

“And this particular race--you call it the Derby, I believe?” he

ventured.

“It’s the greatest racing event of the year. The papers this morning

were full of it. Secretary Blaisdell has set his heart on winning it

with Nowell and Ixion, his favorite race horse. He is tipped by all the

papers, and will be the favorite. That is, it is believed he has the

best chance of winning, you know,” she explained. “Ixion and Nowell are

a winning combination.”

“Where is the race to take place?” persisted the bishop.

“At the Ravenswood Park race course,” answered the girl, and then,

impulsively: “Why, bishop, I might almost be tempted to believe that

you are going! Why not let me take you?” she pleaded, coaxingly, with

sweet, pursed-up lips and chin stuck out coquettishly toward him.

She pictured to herself what a sensation she would create with a bishop

on parade at the races. Well she knew that not a few would be there who

would recognize them both, and she could imagine herself the cynosure

of the eyes of hundreds of churchgoers transformed into racegoers on

this Derby day.

The idea was positively entrancing! With glowing eyes and cheeks

flushed at the thought, Miss Danvers awaited the bishop’s reply. It was

merely a shake of the head, without comment on her daring.

Then the mother, having overheard the latter part of the conversation,

turned to her daughter with gentle reproof:

“I’m surprised at you, Isobel, having the audacity to extend such an

invitation to a bishop. It’s shocking bad taste, really. I’m ashamed of

you.”

Naturally the conversation drifted into other channels.

During the rest of the meal the bishop was strangely distracted. On

more than one occasion his hostess found it necessary to address the

same remark to him, whereat he excused himself somewhat lamely for his

inattention.

After they had risen from the board he pleaded some matter that needed

his especial care, and retired to his chamber. Probably a half hour

later Mrs. Danvers and the rector, who remained to talk over church

affairs, saw the bishop descend the main stairway near the drawing room.

“He wishes to be alone still. I can tell by his expression,” said the

rector. “I know him like a book. A queer man in some ways, but no

better anywhere. Inclined too much to melancholy, and a trifle too

straitlaced for his advanced age, perhaps.”

In his own chamber the bishop had gone over in his own mind, not once,

but a hundred times, the question, at the present the one momentous to

him above all others, should he visit the race course that afternoon to

see the Derby run? A thousand reasons had suggested themselves why he

should not do so. One why he should stood forth clearly and plainly.

When all had been turned over in his mind, something told him “Go!”

But how should he go? As he was, his clothes of severe clerical cut

singling him out for the sneers of the unrighteous? He would not

deny his Master. In his own heart he knew that his presence at the

race course meant no intent of desecration of his calling, though he

believed horse racing was one of the unpardonable sins.

So his mind was settled that he should go!

At the street corner he bought a newspaper. In it he read that the

great Derby would be decided about four P. M. By inquiring casually, he

learned that the race course was not many minutes distant.

Hailing a passing cab, he asked, in a voice in which he endeavored to

hide the shame he felt:

“To the race course, please. Shall I be in time for the Derby race?”

The half-intoxicated driver looked him over carefully before replying,

with a leer:

“All the time you want. I’ll take you right there as cheap as anybody,

and I’ll give you a tip besides! If this wasn’t my busy day I’d be

inside there, too, quick.”

He pointed his whip indefinitely. “Take my tip, sir,” he added,

insinuatingly, holding to the swinging door. “Don’t bet a penny on

Ixion. Hotspur is the goods to-day. He’ll beat Ixion a mile. You mind

what I’m telling you. I’ve got inside information.”

The bishop’s soul was filled with disgust as he stepped inside.

The cabby slammed to the door, whirled the vehicle sharply around and

started.

By and by they ran out of the street into an open space with large

gates in front, through which people were passing by the uniformed

gatekeepers. The bishop could catch the flutter of flags in the air;

men and boys were selling sheets of paper and bawling loudly in his

ears. Many cabs and carriages and automobiles were “parked” about the

inclosure. He paid the driver, who again took occasion to tell him, in

a hoarse whisper:

“Take my tip; you won’t be sorry. Bet it all on Hotspur.”

On either side of the gates the bishop saw booths at whose windows men

were selling tickets. Approaching a booth, he tendered a five-dollar

bill, receiving in return a badge and three dollars. For a moment he

hesitated, and looked at the grinning countenance of the ticket seller.

“How much is--this?” he faltered, holding up the badge.

“Grand stand, two dollars; that’s a grand-stand badge.”

The window shut down with a bang, and the small man in black passed

through the turnstile, holding out the badge dumbly to the gatekeeper.

The man tore off something and handed the larger portion back to him.

As the bishop passed inside he saw a man attach the--to him--badge of

iniquity to the lapel of his coat. He himself held the gaudy bit of

pasteboard as if its very touch was defiling, and then tossed it on the

ground.

Presently he found himself in front of a stand a quarter of a mile

long, black with people. So many never had he seen gathered together at

one place.