There were also diffident men and maidens who descended into the

social arena of Mrs. Allen's parlors, as awkward swimmers venture into

deep water, but this is fleeting experience in fashionable life. And

we sincerely hope that some believed that the old divine paradox, "It

is more blessed to give than to receive," is as true in the drawing-room as when the contribution-box goes round, and proposed to enjoy

themselves by contributing to the enjoyment of others, and to see

nothing that would tempt to heroic conduct at Tiffany's the next day.

When the last finishing touches had been given, and maids and

hairdressers stood around in rapt politic breathlessness, and were

beginning to pass into that stage in which they might be regarded as

exclamation points, Mrs. Allen and her daughters swept away to take

their places at the head of the parlors in order to receive. They

liked the prelude of applause upstairs well enough, but then it was

only like the tuning of the instruments before the orchestra fairly

opens.

Mrs. Allen, as she majestically took her position, evidently belonged

to that class whom pride petrifies. Her self-complacency on such an

occasion was habitual, her coolness and repose those of a veteran. A

nervous creature upstairs with her family, excitement made her, under

the eye of society, so steady and self-controlled that she was like

one of the old French marshals who could plan a campaign under the

hottest fire. Her blue eyes grew quite brilliant and seemed to take in

everything. Some natural color shone where the cosmetics permitted,

and her form seemed to dilate with something more than the mysteries

of French modistes. Her manner and expression said:

"I am Mrs. Allen. We are of an old New York family. We are very, very

rich. This entertainment is immensely expensive and perfect in kind. I

defy criticism. I expect applause."

Of course this was all veiled by society's completest polish; but

still by a close observer it could be seen, just as a skilful sculptor

drapes a form, but leaves its outlines perfect.

Laura was the echo of her mother, modified by the element of youth.

Zell fairly blazed. What with sparkling jewelry, flaming cheeks,

flashing eyes, and words thrown off like scintillating sparks, she

suggested an exquisite July firework, burning longer than usual and

surprising every one. Admiration followed her like a torrent, and her

vanity dilated without measure as attention and compliments were

almost forced upon her, and yet it was frank, good-natured vanity, as

naturally to be expected in her case as a throng of gaudy poppies

where a handful of seed had been dropped. Zell's nature was a soil

where good or bad seed would grow vigorously.

Mr. Van Dam was never far off, and watched her with intent, gloating

eyes, saying in self-congratulation:

"What a delicious morsel she will make!" and adding his mite to the

general chorus of flattery by mild assertions like the following:

"Do you know that there is not a lady present that for a moment can

compare with you?"

"How delightfully frank he is!" thought Zell of her distinguished

admirer, who was as open as a quicksand that can swallow up anything

and leave not a trace on its surface. Edith was quite as beautiful as

Zell, but far less brilliant and pronounced. Though quiet and

graceful, she was not stately like Laura. Her full dark eyes were

lustrous rather than sparkling, and they dwelt shrewdly and

comprehendingly on all that was passing, and conveyed their

intelligence to a brain that was judging quite accurately of men and

things at a time when so many people "lose their heads."

Zell was intoxicated by the incense she received. Laura offered

herself so much that she was enshrouded in a thick cloud of

complacency all the time. Edith was told by the eyes and manner of

those around her that she was beautiful and highly favored by wealth

and position generally. But she knew this, as a matter of fact,

before, and did not mean to make a fool of herself on account of it.

These points thoroughly settled and quietly realized, she was in a

condition to go out of herself and enjoy all that was going on.

She was specially elated at this time also, as she had gathered from

her father's words that his danger was nearly over and that before the

week was out they could defy Mr. Fox, look forward to Europe and

bright voyaging generally.

Mr. Allen did not tell her his terrible fear that Mr. Fox had been a

little too prompt, and that crushing disaster might still be

impending. He had said to himself, "Let her and all of them make the

most of this evening. It may be the last of the kind that they will

enjoy."

The spacious parlors filled rapidly. If lavish expenditure and a large

brilliant attendance could insure their enjoyment, it was not wanting.

Flowers in fanciful baskets on the tables and in great banks on the

mantels and in the fireplaces deservedly attracted much attention and

praise, though the sum expended on their transient beauty was

appalling. Their delicious fragrance mingling with perfumes of

artificial origin suggested a like intermingling of the more delicate,

subtile, but genuine manifestations of character, and the graces of

mind and manner borrowed for the occasion.

The scene was very brilliant. There were marvellous toilets--dresses

not beginning as promptly as they should, perhaps, but seemingly

seeking to make up for this deficiency by elegance and costliness,

having once commenced. There was no economy in the train, if there had

been in the waist. Therefore gleaming shoulders, glittering diamonds,

the soft radiance of pearls, the sheen of gold, and lustrous eyes

aglow with excitement, and later in the evening, with wine, gave a

general phosphorescent effect to the parlors that Mrs. Allen

recognized, from long experience, as the sparkling crown of success.

So much elegance on the part of the ladies present would make the

party the gem of the season, and the gentlemen in dark dress made a

good black enamel setting.

There was a confused rustle of silks and a hum of voices, and now and

then a silvery laugh would ring out above these like the trill of a

bird in a breezy grove. Later, light airy music floated through the

rooms, followed by the rhythmic cadence of feet. A thinly clad

shivering little match-girl stopped on her weary tramp to her cellar

and caught glimpses of the scene through the oft-opening door and

between the curtains of the windows. It seemed to her that those

glancing forms were in heaven. Alas for this earthly paradise!

Mr. Fox, with characteristic malice, had managed that Mr. Allen and

perhaps the family should have, as his contribution to the

entertainment, the sickening dread which the news in the afternoon

papers would occasion. As the evening advanced he determined to accept

the invitation and watch the effect. He avoided Mr. Allen, and soon

gathered that Edith and the rest knew nothing of the impending blow.

Edith smiled graciously on him; she felt that, like the sun, she could

shine on all that night. But as, in his insolence, his attentions grew

marked, she soon shook him off by permitting Gus Elliot to claim her

for a waltz.

Mr. Fox glided around, Mephistopheles-like, gloating on the sinister

changes that he would soon occasion. He was to succeed even better

than he dreamed.

The evening went forward with music and dancing, discussing,

disparaging, flirting, and skirmishing, culminating in numbers and

brilliancy as some gorgeous flower might expand; and seemingly it

would have ended by the gay company's rustling departure like the

flower, as the varied colored petals drop away from the stem, had not

an event occurred which was like a rude hand plucking the flower in

its fullest bloom and tearing the petals away in mass.

The magnificent supper had just been demolished. Champagne had foamed

without stint, cause and symbol of the increasing but transient

excitement of the occasion. More potent wines and liquors, suggestive

of the stronger and deeper passions that were swaying the mingled

throng, had done their work, and all, save the utterly _blase_,

had secured that noble elevation which it is the province of these

grand social combinations to create. Even Mr. Allen regained his

habitual confidence and elevation as his waist-coat expanded under, or

rather over, those means of cheer and consolation which he had so long

regarded as the best panacea for earthly ills. The oppressive sense of

danger gave place to a consciousness of the warm, rosy present. Mr.

Fox and the custom-house seemed but the ugly phantoms of a past dream.

Was he not the rich Mr. Allen, the owner of this magnificent mansion,

the cornerstone of this superb entertainment? If by reason of wine he

saw a little double, he only saw double homage on every side. He heard

in men's tones, and saw in woman's glances, that any one who could pay

for his surroundings that night was no ordinary person. His wife

looked majestic as she swept through the parlors on the arm of one of

his most distinguished fellow-citizens. Through the library door he

could see Mr. Goulden leaning toward Laura and saying something that

made even her pale face quite peony-like. Edith, exquisite as a moss-rose, was about to lead off in the German in the large front parlor.

Zell was near him, the sparkling centre of a breezy, merry little

throng that had gathered round her. It seemed that all that he loved

and valued most was grouped around him in the guise most attractive to

his worldly eyes. In this moment of unnatural elation hope whispered,

"To-morrow you can sell your stock, and, instead of failing, increase

your vast fortune, and then away to new scenes, new pleasures, free

from the burden of care and fear." It was at that moment of false

confidence and pride, when in suggestive words descriptive of the

ancient tragedy of Belshazzar he "had drank wine and praised the gods

of gold and of silver" which he had so long worshipped, and which had

secured to him all that so dilated his soul with exultation, that he

saw the handwriting, not of shadowy fingers "upon the wall," but of

his partner, sent, as agreed, by a special messenger. With revulsion

and chill of fear he tore open the envelope and read:

"Pox has done his worst. We are out for a million--All will be in the

morning papers."

Even his florid, wine-inflamed cheeks grew pale, and he raised his

hand tremblingly to his head, and slowly lifted his eyes like a man

who dreads seeing something, but is impelled to look. The first object

they rested on was the sardonic, mocking face of Mr. Fox, who, ever on

the alert, had seen the messenger enter, and guessed his errand. The

moment Mr. Allen saw this hated visage, a sudden fury took possession

of him. He crushed the missive in his clenched fist, and took a hasty

stride of wrath toward his tormentor, stopped, put his hand again to

his head, a film came over his eyes, he reeled a second, and then fell

like a stone to the floor. The heavy thud of the fall, the clash of

the chandelier overhead, could be heard throughout the rooms above the

music and hum of voices, and all were startled. Edith in the very act

of leading off in the dance stood a second like an exquisite statue of

awed expectancy, and then Zell's shriek of fear and agony, "Father!"

brought her to the spot, and with wild, frightened eyes, and blanched

faces, the two girls knelt above the unconscious man, while the

startled guests gathered round in helpless curiosity.

The usual paralysis following sudden accident was brief on this

occasion, for there were two skilful physicians present, one of them

having long been the family attendant. Mrs. Allen and Laura, in a

half-hysterical state, stood clinging to each other, supported by Mr.

Goulden, as the medical gentlemen made a slight examination and

applied restoratives. After a moment they lifted their heads and

looked gravely and significantly at each other; then the family

adviser said:

"Mr. Allen had better be carried at once to his room, and the house

become quiet."

An injudicious guest asked in a loud whisper, "Is it apoplexy?"

Mrs. Allen caught the word, and with a stifled cry fainted dead away,

and was borne to her apartment in an unconscious state. Laura, who had

inherited Mrs. Allen's nervous nature, was also conveyed to her room,

laughing and crying in turns beyond control. Zell still knelt over her

father, sobbing passionately, while Edith, with her large eyes dilated

with fear, and her cheeks in wan contrast with the sunset glow they

had worn all the evening, maintained her presence of mind, and asked

Mr. Goulden, Mr. Van Dam, and Gus Elliot, to carry her father to his

room. They, much pleased in thus being singled out as special friends

of the family, officiously obeyed.

Poor Mr. Allen was borne away from the pinnacle of his imaginary

triumph as if dead, Zell following, wringing her hands, and with

streaming eyes; but Edith reminded one of some wild, timid creature of

the woods, which, though in an extremity of danger and fear, is alert

and watchful, as if looking for some avenue of escape. Her searching

eyes turned almost constantly toward the family physician, and he as

persistently avoided meeting them.

CHAPTER VII

AMONG THE BREAKERS

After another brief but fuller examination of Mr. Allen in the privacy

of his own room, Dr. Mark went down to the parlors. The guests were

gathered in little groups, talking in low, excited whispers; those who

had seen the reading of the note and Mr. Allen's strange action

gaining brief eminence by their repeated statements of what they had

witnessed and their varied surmises. The role of commentator, if

mysterious human action be the text, is always popular, and as this

explanatory class are proverbially gifted in conjecture, there were

many theories of explanation. Some of the guests had already the good

taste to prepare for departure, and when Dr. Mark appeared from the

sick room, and said:

"Mr. Allen and the family will be unable to appear again this evening.

I am under the painful necessity of saying that this occasion, which

opened so brilliantly, must now come to a sad and sudden end. I will

convey your adieux and expressions of sympathy to the family"--there

was a general move to the dressing-rooms. The doctor was overwhelmed

for a moment with expressions of sympathy, that in the main were felt,

and well questioned by eager and genuine curiosity, for Fox had

dropped some mysterious hints during the evening, which had been

quietly circulating. But Dr. Mark was professionally non-committal,

and soon excused himself that he might attend to his patient.

The house, that seemingly a moment before was ablaze with light and

resounding with fashionable revelry, suddenly became still, and grew

darker and darker, as if the shadowing wings of the dreaded angel were

drawing very near. In the large, elegant rooms, where so short a time

before gems and eyes had vied in brightness, old Hannibal now walked

alone with silent tread and a peculiarly awed and solemn visage. One

by one he extinguished the lights, leaving but faint glimmers here and

there, that were like a few forlorn hopes struggling against the

increasing darkness of disaster. Under his breath he kept repeating

fervently, "De Lord hab mercy," and this, perhaps, was the only

intelligent prayer that went up from the stricken household in this

hour of sudden danger and alarm. Though we believe the Divine Father

sees the dumb agony of His creatures, and pities them, and often when

they, like the drowning, are grasping at straws of human help and

cheer, puts out His strong hand and holds them up; still it is in

accordance with His just law that those who seek and value His

friendship find it and possess it in adversity. The height of the

storm is a poor time and the middle of the angry Atlantic a poor place

in which to provide life-boats.

The Allens had never looked to Heaven, save as a matter of form. They

had a pew in a fashionable church, but did not very regularly occupy

it, and such attendance had done scarcely anything to awaken or

quicken their spiritual life. They came home and gossiped about the

appearance of their "set," and perhaps criticised the music, but one

would never have dreamed from manner or conversation that they had

gone to a sacred place to worship God in humility. Indeed, scarcely a

thought of Him seemed to have dwelt in their minds. Religious faith

had never been of any practical help, and now in their extremity it

seemed utterly intangible, and in no sense to be depended on.

When Mrs. Allen recovered from her swoon, and Laura had gained some

self-control, they sent for Dr. Mark, and eagerly suggested both their

hope and fear.

"It's only a fainting fit, doctor, is it not? Will he not soon be

better?"

"My dear madam, we will do all we can," said the doctor, with that

professional solemnity which might accompany the reading of a death

warrant, "but it is my painful duty to tell you to prepare for the

worst. Your husband has an attack of apoplexy."

He had scarcely uttered the words before she was again in a swoon, and

Laura also lost her transient quietness. Leaving his assistant and

Mrs. Allen's maid to take care of them, he went back to his graver

charge.

Mr. Allen lay insensible on his bed, and one could hardly realize that

he was a dying man. His face was as flushed and full as it often

appeared on his return from his club. To the girls' unpracticed ears,

his loud, stentorous breathing only indicated heavy sleep. But neither

they nor the doctor could arouse him, and at last the physician met

Edith's questioning eyes, and gravely and significantly shook his

head. Though she had borne up so steadily and quietly, he felt more

for her than for any of the others.

"Oh, doctor! can't you save him?" she pleaded.

"You must save him," cried Zell, her eyes flashing through her tears,

"I would be ashamed, if I were a physician, to stand over a strong

man, and say helplessly, 'I can do nothing.' Is this all your boasted

skill amounts to? Either do something at once or let us get some one

who will."

"Your feelings to-night, Miss Zell," said the doctor quietly, "will

excuse anything you say, however wild and irrational. I am doing

all--"

"I am not wild or unreasonable," cried Zell. "I only demand that my

father's life be saved." Then starting up she threw off a shawl and

stood before Dr. Mark in the dress she had worn in the evening, that

seemed a sad mockery in that room of death. Her neck and arms were

bare, and even the cool, experienced physician was startled by her

wonderful beauty and strange manner. Her white throat was convulsed,

her bosom heaved tumultuously, and on her face was the expression that

might have rested on the face of a maiden like herself centuries

before, when shown the rack and dungeon, and told to choose between

her faith and her life.

But after a moment she extended her white rounded arm toward him and

said steadily:

"I have read that if the blood of a young, vigorous person is infused

into another who is feeble and old, it will give renewed strength and

health. Open a vein in my arm. Save his life if you take mine."

"You are a brave, noble girl," said Dr. Mark, with much emotion,

taking the extended hand and pressing it tenderly, "but you are asking

what is impossible in this case. Do you not remember that I am an old

friend of your father's? It grieves me to the heart that his attack is

so severe that I fear all within the reach of human skill is vain."

Zell, who was a creature of impulse, and often of noblest impulse, as

we have seen, now reacted into a passion of weeping, and sank

helplessly on the floor. She was capable of heroic action, but she had

no strength for woman's lot, which is so often that of patient

endurance.

Edith came and put her arms around her, and with gentle, soothing

words, as if speaking to a child, half carried her to her room, where

she at last sobbed herself asleep.

For another hour Edith and the doctor watched alone, and the dying man

sank rapidly, going down into the darkness of death without word or

sign.

"Oh that he would speak once more!" moaned Edith.

"I fear he will not, my dear," said the doctor, pitifully.

A little later Mr. Allen was motionless, like one who has been touched

in unquiet sleep and becomes still. Death had touched him, and a

deeper sleep had fallen upon him.

One of the great daily bulletins will go to press in an hour. A

reporter jumps into a waiting hack and is driven rapidly uptown.

While the city sleeps preparations must go on in the markets for

breakfast, and in printing rooms for that equal necessity in our day,

the latest news. Therefore all night long there are dusky figures

flitting hither and thither, seeing to it that when we come down in

gown and slippers, our steak and the world's gossip be ready.

The breakfast of the Gothamites was furnished abundantly with _sauce

piquante_ on the morning of the last day of February, for Hannibal

had shaken his head ominously, and wiped away a few honest tears,

before he could tremulously say to the eager reporter:

"Mr. Allen--hab--just--died."

Gathering what few particulars he could, and imagining many more, the

reporter was driven back even more rapidly, full of the elation of a

man who has found a good thing and means to make the most of it. Mr.

Allen himself was not of importance to him, but news about him was.

And this fact crowning the story of his violation of the revenue law

and his prospective loss of a million, would make a brisk breeze in

the paper to which he was attached, and might waft him a little

further on as an enterprising news-gatherer.

It certainly would be the topic of the day on all lips, and poor Mr.

Allen might have plumed himself on this if he had known it, for few

people, unless they commit a crime, are of sufficient importance to be

talked of all day In large, busy New York. In the world's eyes Mr.

Allen had committed a crime. Not that they regarded his stock gambling

as such. Multitudes of church members in good and regular standing

were openly engaged in this. Nor could the slight and unintentional

violation of the revenue law be regarded as such, though so grave in

its consequences. But he had faltered and died when he should not have

given way. What the world demands is success: and sometimes a devil

may secure this where a true man cannot. The world regarded Mr. Van

Dam and Mr. Goulden as very successful men.

Mr. Fox also had secured success by one adroit wriggle--we can

describe his mode of achieving greatness by no better phrase. He was

destined to receive half a million for his treachery to his employers.

During the war, when United States securities were at their worst;

when men, pledged to take them, forfeited money rather than do so, Mr.

Allen had lent the government millions, because he believed in it,

loved it, and was resolved to sustain it. That same government now

rewards him by putting it in the power of a dishonest clerk to ruin

him, and gives him $500,000 for doing so. Thus it resulted; for we are

compelled to pass hastily over the events immediately following Mr.

Allen's death. His partners made a good fight, showed that there was

no intention to violate the law, and that it was often difficult to

comply with it literally--that the sum claimed to be lost to the

government was ridiculously disproportionate to the amount

confiscated. But it was all in vain. There was the letter of the law,

and there were Mr. Fox and his associates in the custom-house, "all

honorable men," with hands itching to clutch the plunder.

But before this question was settled the fate of the stock operation

in Wall Street was most effectually disposed of. As soon as Mr.

Goulden heard of Mr. Allen's death, he sold at a slight loss all he

had; but his action awakened suspicion, and it was speedily learned

that the rise was due mainly to Mr. Allen's strong pushing, and the

inevitable results followed. As poor Mr. Allen's remains were lowered

into the vault, his stock in Wall Street was also going down with a

run.

In brief, in the absence of the master's hand, and by reason of his

embarrassments, there were general wreck and ruin in his affairs; and

Mrs. Allen was soon compelled to face the fact, even more awful to her

than her husband's death, that not a penny remained of his colossal

fortune, and that she had yawningly signed away all of her own means.

But she could only wring her hands in view of these blighting truths,

and indulge in half-uttered complaints against her husband's "folly,"

as she termed it. From the first her grief had been more emotional

than deep, and her mind, recovering in part its usual poise, had begun

to be much occupied with preparations for a grand funeral, which was

carried out to her taste. Then arose deeply interesting questions as

to various styles of mourning costume, and an exciting vista of

dressmaking opened before her. She was growing into quite a serene and

hopeful frame when the miserable and blighting facts all broke upon

her. When there was little of seeming necessity to do, and there were

multitudes to do for her, Mrs. Allen's nerves permitted no small

degree of activity. But now, as it became certain that she and her

daughters must do all themselves, her hands grew helpless. The idea of

being poor was to her like dying. It was entering on an experience so

utterly foreign and unknown that it seemed like going to another world

and phase of existence, and she shrank in pitiable dread from it.

Laura had all her mother's helpless shrinking from poverty, but with

another and even bitterer ingredient added. Mr. Goulden was extremely

polite, exquisitely sympathetic, and in terms as vague as elegantly

expressed had offered to do anything (but nothing in particular) in

his power to show his regard for the family and his esteem for his

departed friend. He was very sorry that business would compel him to

leave town for some little time--

Laura had the spirit to interrupt him saying, "It matters little, sir.

There are no further Wall Street operations to be carried on here.

Invest your time and friendship where it will pay."

Mr. Goulden, who plumed himself that he would slip out of this bad

matrimonial speculation with such polished skill that he would leave

only flattering regret and sighs behind, under the biting satire of

Laura's words suddenly saw what a contemptible creature is the man

whom selfish policy, rather than honor and principle, governs. He had

brains enough to comprehend himself and lose his self-respect then and

there, as he went away tingling with shame from the girl whom he had

wronged, but who had detected his sordid meanness. Sigh after him! She

would ever despise him, and that hurt Mr. Goulden's vanity severely.

He had come very near loving Laura Allen, about as near perhaps as he

ever would come to loving any one, and it had cost him a little more

to give her up than to choose between a good and a bad venture on the

Street. With compressed lips he had said to himself--"No gushing

sentiment. In carrying out your purpose to be rich you must marry

wealth." Therefore he had gone to make what he meant to be his final

call, feeling quite heroic in his steadfastness--his loyalty to

purpose, that is, himself. But as he recalled during his homeward walk

her glad welcome, her wistful, pleading looks, and then, as she

realized the truth, her pain, her contempt, and her meaning words of

scorn, his miserable egotism was swept aside, and for the first time

the selfish man saw the question from her standpoint, and as we have

said he was not so shallow but that he saw and loathed himself. He

lost his self-respect as he never had done before, and therefore to a

certain extent his power ever to be happy again.

Small men, full of petty conceit, can recover from any wounds upon

their vanity, but proud and large-minded men have a self-respect, even

though based upon questionable foundation. It is essential to them,

and losing it they are inwardly wretched. As soldiers carry the

painful scars of some wounds through life, so Mr. Goulden would find

that Laura's words had left a sore place while memory lasted.

Mr. Van Dam quite disarmed Edith's suspicions and prejudices by being

more friendly and intimate with Zell than ever, and the latter was

happy and exultant in the fact, saying, with much elation, that her

friend was "not a mercenary wretch, like Mr. Goulden, but remained

just as true and kind as ever."

It was evident that this attention and show of kindness to the warm-hearted girl made a deep impression and greatly increased Mr. Van

Dam's power over her. But Edith's suspicion and dislike began to

return as she saw more of the manner and spirit of the man. She

instinctively felt that he was bad and designing.

One day she quite incensed Zell, who was chanting his praises, by

saying:

"I haven't any faith in him. What has he done to show real friendship

for us? He comes here only to amuse himself with you; Gus Elliot is

the only one who has been of any help."

But Edith had her misgivings about Gus also. Now, in her trouble and

poverty, his weakness began to reveal itself in a new and repulsive

light. In fact, that exquisitely fine young gentleman loved Edith well

enough to marry her, but not to work for her. That was a sacrifice

that he could not make for any woman. Though out of his natural

kindness and good-nature he felt very sorry for her, and wanted to

help and pet her, he had been shown his danger so clearly that he was

constrained and awkward when with her, for, to tell the truth, his

father had taken him aside and said:

"Look here, Gus. See to it that you don't entangle yourself with Miss

Allen, now her father has failed. She couldn't support you now, and

you never can support even yourself. If you would go to work like a

man--but one has got to be a man to do that. It seems true, as your

mother says, that you are of too fine clay for common uses. Therefore,

don't make a fool of yourself. You can't keep up your style on a

pretty face, and you must not wrong the girl by making her think you

can take care of her. I tell you plainly, I can't bear another ounce

added to my burden, and how long I shall stand up under it as it is, I

can't tell."

Gus listened with a sulky, injured air. He felt that his father never

appreciated him as did his mother and sisters, and indeed society at

large. Society to Gus was the ultra-fashionable world of which he was

one of the shining lights. The ladies of the family quite restored his

equanimity by saying:

"Now see here, Gus, don't dream of throwing yourself away on Edith

Allen. You can marry any girl you please in the city. So, for Heaven's

sake" (though what Heaven had to do with their advice it is hard to

say), "don't let her lead you on to say what you would wish unsaid.

Remember they are no more now than any other poor people, except that

they are refined, etc., but this will only make poverty harder for

them. Of course we are sorry for them, but in this world people have

got to take care of themselves. So we must be on the lookout for some

one who has money which can't be sunk in a stock operation as if

thrown into the sea."

After all this sound reason, poor, weak Grus, vaguely conscious of his

helplessness, as stated by his father, and quite believing his

mother's assurance that "he could marry any girl he pleased," was in

no mood to urge the penniless Edith to give him her empty hand, while

before the party, when he believed it full, he was doing his best to

bring her to this point, though in fact she gave him little

opportunity.

Edith detected the change, and before very long surmised the cause. It

made the young girl curl her lip, and say, in a tone of scorn that

would have done Gus good to hear:

"The idea of a _man_ acting in this style."

But she did not care enough about him to receive a wound of any depth,

and with a good-natured tolerance recognized his weakness, and his

genuine liking for her, and determined to make him useful.

Edith was very practical, and possessed of a brave, resolute nature.

She was capable of strong feelings, but Gus Elliot was not the man to

awaken such in any woman. She liked his company, and proposed to use

him in certain ways. Under her easy manner Gus also became at ease,

and, finding that he was not expected to propose and be sentimental,

was all the more inclined to be friendly.

"I want you to find me books, and papers also, if there are any, that

tell how to raise fruit," she said to him one day.

"What a funny request! I should as soon expect you would ask for

instruction how to drive four-in-hand."

"Nothing of that style, henceforth. I must learn something useful now.

Only the rich can afford to be good-for-nothing, and we are not rich

now."

"For which I am very sorry," said Gus, with some feeling.

"Thank you. Such disinterested sympathy is beautiful," said Edith

dryly.

Gus looked a little red and awkward, but hastened to say, "I will hunt

up what you wish, and bring it as soon as possible."

"Four are very good. That is all at present," said Edith, in a tone

that made Gus feel that it was indeed all that it was in his power to

do for her at that time, and he went away with a dim perception that

he was scarcely more than her errand boy. It made him very

uncomfortable. Though he wished her to understand he could not marry

her now, he wished her to sigh a little after him. Gus's vanity rather

resented that, instead of pining for him, she should with a little

quiet satire set him to work. He had never read a romance that ended

so queerly. He had expected that they might have a little tender scene

over the inexorable fate that parted them, give and take a memento,

gasp, appeal to the moon, and see each other's face no more, she going

to the work and poverty that he could never stoop to from the innate

refinement and elegance of his being, and he to hunt up the heiress to

whom he would give the honor of maintaining him in his true sphere.

But his little melodrama was entirely spoiled by her matter-of-fact

way, and what was worse still he felt in her presence as if he did not

amount to much, and that she knew it; and yet, like the poor moth that

singes its wings around the lamp, he could not keep away.

The prominent trait of Gus's character, as of so many others in our

luxurious age of self-pleasing, was weakness; and yet one must be

insane with vanity to be at ease if he can do nothing resolutely and

dare nothing great. He is a cripple, and, if not a fool, knows it.

During the eventful month that followed Mr. Allen's death, Mrs. Allen

and her daughters led what seemed to them a very strange life. While

in one sense it was real and intensely painful, in another the

experiences were so new and strange that it all seemed an unreal

dream, a distressing nightmare of trouble and danger, from which they

might awaken to their old life.

Mrs. Allen, from her large circle of acquaintances, had numerous

callers, many coming from mere morbid curiosity, more from mingled

motives, and not a few from genuine tearful sympathy. To these "her

friends," as she emphatically called them, she found a melancholy

pleasure in recounting all the recent woes, in which she ever appeared

as chief sufferer and chief mourner, though her husband seemed among

the minor losses, and thus most of her time was spent daring the last

few weeks at her old home. Her friends appeared to find a melancholy

pleasure in listening to these details and then in recounting them

again to other "friends" with a running commentary of their own, until

that little fraction of the feminine world acquainted with the Allens

had sighed, surmised, and perhaps gossiped over the "afflicted family"

so exhaustively that it was really time for something new. The men and

the papers downtown also had their say, and perhaps all tried, as far

as human nature would permit, to say nothing but good of the dead and

unfortunate.

Laura, after the stinging pain of each successive blow to her

happiness, sank into a dreary apathy, and did mechanically the few

things Edith asked of her.

Zell lived in varied moods and conditions, now weeping bitterly for

her father, again resenting with impotent passion the change in their

fortunes, but ending usually by comforting herself with the thought

that Mr. Van Dam was true to her. He was as true and faithful as an

insidious, incurable disease when once infused into the system. His

infernal policy now was to gradually alienate her interest from her

family and centre it in him. Though promising nothing in an open,

manly way, he adroitly made her believe that only through him, could

she now hope to reach brighter days again, and to Zell he seemed the

one means of escape from a detested life of poverty and privation. She

became more infatuated with him than ever, and cherished a secret

resentment against Edith because of her distrust and dislike of him.

The Allens had but few near relatives in the city at this time, and

with these they were not on very good terms, nor were they the people

to be helpful in adversity. Mr. Allen's partners were men of the world

like himself, and they were also incensed that he should have been

carrying on private speculations in Wall Street to the extent of

risking all his capital. His fatal stock operation, together with the

government confiscation, had involved them also in ruin; and they had

enough to do to look after themselves. They were far more eager to

secure something out of the general wreck than to see that anything

remained for the family. The Allens were left very much to themselves

in their struggle with disaster, securing help and advice chiefly as

they paid for it.

Mr. Allen was accustomed to say that women were incapable of business,

and yet here are the ladies of his own household compelled to grapple

with the most perplexing forms of business or suffer aggravated

losses. Though all of his family were of mature years, and thousands

had been spent on their education, they were as helpless as four

children in dealing with the practical questions that daily came to

them for decision. At first all matters were naturally referred to the

widow, but she would only wring her hands and say:

"I don't know anything about these horrid things. Can't I be left

alone with my sorrow in peace a few days? Go to Edith."

And to Edith at last all came till the poor girl was almost

distracted. It was of no use to go to Laura for advice, for she would

only say in dreary apathy:

"Just as you think best. Anything you say."

She was indulging in unrestrained wretchedness to the utmost.

Luxurious despair is so much easier than painful perplexing action.

Zell was still "the child" and entirely occupied with Mr. Van Dam. So

Edith had to bear the brunt of everything. She did not do this in

uncomplaining sweetness, like an angel, but scolded the others soundly

for leaving all to her. They whined back that they "couldn't do

anything, and didn't know how to do anything."

"You know as much as I do," retorted Edith.

And this was true. Had not Edith possessed a practical resolute

nature, that preferred any kind of action to apathetic inaction and

futile grieving, she would have been as helpless as the rest.

Do you say then that it was a mere matter of chance that Edith should

be superior to the others, and that she deserved no credit, and they

no blame? Why should such all-important conditions of character be the

mere result of chance and circumstance? Would not Christian education

and principle have vastly improved the Edith that existed? Would they

not have made the others helpful, self-forgetting, and sympathetic?

Why should the world be full of people so deformed, or morally feeble,

or so ignorant, as to be helpless? Why should the naturally strong

work with only contempt and condemnation for the weak? While many say,

"Stand aside, I am holier than thou," perhaps more say, "Stand aside,

I am wiser--stronger than thou," and the weak are made more hopelessly

discouraged. This helplessness on one hand, and arrogant fault-finding

strength on the other, are not the result of chance, but of an

imperfect education. They come from the neglect and wrong-doing of

those whose province it was to train and educate.

If we find among a family of children reaching maturity one helpless

from deformity, and another from feebleness, and are told that the

parents, by employing surgical skill, might have removed the

deformity, and overcome the weakness by tonic treatment, but had

neglected to do so, we should not have much to say about chance. I

know of a poor man who spent nearly all that he had in the world to

have his boy's leg straightened, and he was called a "good father."

What are these physical defects compared with the graver defects of

character?

Even though Mr. Allen is dead, we cannot say that he was a good

father, though he spent so many thousands on his daughters. We

certainly cannot call Mrs. Allen a good mother, and the proof of this

is that Laura is feeble and selfish, Zell deformed through lack of

self-control, and Edith hard and pitiless in her comparative strength.

They were unable to cope with the practical questions of their

situation. They had been launched upon the perilous, uncertain voyage

of life without the compass of a true faith or the charts of principle

to guide them, and they had been provided with no life-boats of

knowledge to save them in case of disaster. They are now tossing among

the breakers of misfortune, almost utterly the sport of the winds and

waves of circumstances. If these girls never reached the shore of

happiness and safety, could we wonder?

How would your daughter fare, my reader, if you were gone and she were

poor, with her hands and brain to depend on for bread, and her heart

culture for happiness? In spite of all your providence and foresight,

such may be her situation. Such becomes the condition of many men's

daughters every day.

But time and events swept the Allens forward, as the shipwrecked are

borne on the crest of a wave, and we must follow their fortunes.

Hungry creditors, especially the petty ones uptown, stripped them of

everything they could lay their hands on, and they were soon compelled

to leave their Fifth Avenue mansion. The little place in the country,

given to Edith partly in jest by her father as a birthday present, was

now their only refuge, and to this they prepared to go on the first of

April. Edith, as usual, took the lead, and was to go in advance of the

others with such furniture as they had been able to keep, and prepare

for their coming. Old Hannibal, who had grown gray in the service of

the family, and now declined to leave it, was to accompany her. On a

dark, lowering day, symbolic of their fortunes, some loaded drays took

down to the boat that with which they would commence the meagre

housekeeping of their poverty. Edith went slowly down the broad steps

leading from her elegant home, and before she entered the carriage

turned for one lingering, tearful look, such as Eve may have bent upon

the gate of Paradise closing behind her, then sprang into the

carriage, drew the curtains, and sobbed all the way to the boat.

Scarcely once before, during that long, hard month, had she so given

way to her feelings. But she was alone now and none could see her

tears and call her weak. Hannibal took his seat on the box with the

driver, and looked and felt very much as he did when following his

master to Greenwood.

CHAPTER VIII

WARPED

It is the early breakfast hour at a small frame house, situated about

a mile from the staid but thriving village of Pushton. But the

indications around the house do not denote thrift. Quite the reverse.

As the neighbors expressed it, "there was a screw loose with Lacey,"

the owner of this place. It was going down hill like its master. A

general air of neglect and growing dilapidation impressed the most

casual observer. The front gate hung on one hinge; boards were off the

shackly barn, and the house had grown dingy and weather-stained from

lack of paint. But as you entered and passed from the province of the

master to that of the mistress a new element was apparent, struggling

with, but unable to overcome, the predominant tendency to unthrift and

seediness. But everything that Mrs. Lacey controlled was as neat as

the poor overworked woman could keep it.

At the time our story becomes interested in her fortunes, Mrs. Lacey

was a middle-aged woman, but appeared older than her years warranted,

from the long-continued strain of incessant toil, and from that which

wears much faster still, the depression of an unhappy, ill-mated life.

Her face wore the pathetic expression of confirmed discouragement. She

reminded one of soldiers fighting when they know that it is of no use,

and that defeat will be the only result, but who fight on

mechanically, in obedience to orders.

She is now placing a very plain but wholesome and well-prepared

breakfast on the table, and it would seem that both the eating and

cooking were carried on in the same large living-room. Her daughter, a

rosy-cheeked, half-grown girl of fourteen, was assisting her, and both

mother and daughter seemed in a nervous state of expectancy, as if

hoping and fearing the result of a near event. A moment's glance

showed that this event related to a lad of about seventeen, who was

walking about the room, vainly trying to control the agitation which

is natural even to the cool and experienced when feeling that they are

at one of the crises of life.

It could not be expected of Arden Lacey at his age to be cool and

experienced. Indeed his light curling hair, blue eyes, and a mobile

sensitive mouth, suggested the reverse of a stolid self-poise, or

cheerful endurance. Any one accustomed to observe character could see

that he was possessed of a nervous, fine-fibred nature capable of

noble achievement under right influences, but also easily warped and

susceptible to sad injury under brutal wrong. He was like those

delicate and somewhat complicated musical instruments that produce the

sweetest harmonies when in tune and well played upon, but the most

jangling discords when unstrung and in rough, ignorant hands. He had

inherited his nervous temperament, his tendency to irritation and

excess, from the diseased, over-stimulated system of his father, who

was fast becoming a confirmed inebriate, and who had been poisoning

himself with bad liquors all his life. From his mother he had obtained

what balance he had in temperament, but he owed more to her daily

influence and training. It was the one struggle of the poor woman's

life to shield her children from the evil consequences of their

father's life. For her son she had special anxiety, knowing his

sensitive, high-strung nature, and his tendency to go headlong into

evil if his self-respect and self-control were once lost. His

passionate love for her had been the boy's best trait, and through

this she had controlled him thus far. But she had thought that it

might be best for him to be away from his father's presence and

influence if she could only find something that accorded with his

bent. And this eventually proved to be a college education. The boy

was of a quick and studious mind. From earliest years he had been fond

of books, and as time advanced, the passion for study and reading grew

upon him. He had a strong imagination, and his favorite styles of

reading were such as appealed to this. In the scenes of history and

romance he escaped from the sordid life of toil and shame to which his

father condemned him, into a large realm that seemed rich and

glorified in contrast. When he was but fourteen the thought of a

liberal education fired his ambition and became the dream of his life.

He made the very most of the district school to which he was sent in

winter. The teacher happened to be a well-educated man, and took pride

in his apt, eager scholar. Between the boy's and the mother's savings

they had obtained enough to secure private lessons in Latin and Greek,

and now at the age of seventeen he was tolerably well prepared for

college.

But the father had no sympathy at all with these tastes, and from the

incessant labor he required of his son, and the constant interruptions

he occasioned in his studies even in winter, he had been a perpetual

bar to all progress.

On the day previous to the scene described in the opening of this

chapter, the winter term had closed, and Mr. Rule, the teacher, had

declared that Arden could enter college, and with natural pride in his

own work as instructor, intimated that he would lead his class if he

did.

Both mother and son were so elated at this that they determined at

once to state the fact to the father, thinking that if he had any of

the natural feelings of a parent he would take some pride in his boy,

and be willing to help him obtain the education he longed for.

But there is little to be hoped from a man who is completely under the

influence of ignorance and rum. Mr. Lacey was the son of a small

farmer like himself, and never had anything to recommend him but his

fine looks, which had captivated poor Mrs. Lacey to her cost. Unlike

the majority of his class, who are fast becoming a very intelligent

part of the community, and are glad to educate their children, he

boasted that he liked the "old ways," and by these he meant the worst

ways of his father's day, when books and schools were scarce, and few

newspapers found their way to rural homes. He was, like his father

before him, a graduate of the village tavern, and had imbibed bad

liquor and his ideas of life at the same time from that objectionable

source. With the narrow-mindedness of his class, he had a prejudice

against all learning that went beyond the three R's, and had watched

with growing disapprobation his son's taste for books, believing that

it would spoil him as a farm hand, and make him an idle dreamer. He

was less and less inclined to work himself as his frame became

diseased and enfeebled from intemperance, and he determined now to get

as much work as possible out of that "great hulk of a boy," as he

called Arden. He had picked up some hints of the college hopes, and

the very thought angered him. He determined that when the boy broached

the subject he would give him such a "jawing" (to use his own

vernacular) "as would put an end to that nonsense." Therefore both

Arden and his mother, who were waiting as we have described in such a

perturbed anxious state for his entrance, were doomed to bitter

disappointment. At last a heavy red-faced man entered the kitchen,

stalking in on the white floor out of the drizzling rain with his

muddy boots leaving tracks and blotches in keeping with his character.

But he had the grace to wash his grimy hands before sitting down to

the table. He was always in a bad humor in the morning, and the chilly

rain had not improved it. A glance around showed him that something

was on hand, and he surmised that it was the college business. He at

once thought within himself:

"I'll squelch the thing now, once for all."

Turning to his son, he said, "Look here, youngster, why hain't you

been out doing your chores? D'ye expect me to do your work and mine,

too?"

"Father," said the impulsive boy with a voice of trembling eagerness,

"if you will let me go to college next fall, I'll do my work and yours

too. I'll work night and day--"

"What cussed nonsense is this?" demanded the man harshly, clashing

down his knife and fork and turning frowningly toward his son.

"No, but father, listen to me before you refuse. Mr. Rule says I'm fit

to enter college and that I can lead my class too. I've been studying

for this three years. I've set my heart upon it," and in his

earnestness, tears gathered in his eyes.

"The more fool you, and old Rule is another," was the coarse answer.

The boy's eyes flashed angrily, but the mother here spoke.

"You ought to be proud of your son, John; if you were a true father

you would be. If you'd encourage and help him now, he'd make a man

that--"

"Shut up! little you know about it. He'd make one of your snivelling

white-fingered loafers that's too proud to get a living by hard work.

Perhaps you'd like to make a parson out of him. Now look here, old

woman, and you, too, my young cock, I've suspicioned that something of

this kind was up, but I tell you once for all it won't go. Just as

this hulk of a boy is gettin' of some use to me, you want to spoil him

by sending him to college. I'll see him hanged first," and the man

turned to his breakfast as if he had settled it. But he was startled

by his son's exclaiming passionately:

"I will go."

"Look here, what do _you_ mean?" said the father, rising with a black

ugly look.

"I mean I've set my heart on going to college and I will go. You and

all the world shan't hinder me. I won't stay here and be a farm drudge

all my life."

The man's face was livid with anger, and in a low, hissing tone he

said:

"I guess you want taking down a peg, my college gentleman. Perhaps you

don't know I'm master till you're twenty-one," and he reached down a

large leather strap.

"You strike me if you dare," shouted the boy.

"If I dare! haw! haw! If I don't cut the cussed nonsense out of yer

this morning, then I never did," and he took an angry stride toward

his son, who sprang behind the stove.

The wife and mother had stood by growing whiter and whiter, and with

lips pressed closely together. At this critical moment she stepped

before her infuriated husband and seized his arm, exclaiming:

"John, take care. You have reached the end."

"Stand aside," snarled the man, raising the strap, "or I'll give you a

taste of it, too."

The woman's grasp tightened on his arm, and in a voice that made him

pause and look fixedly at her, she said:

"If you strike me or that boy I'll take my children and we will leave

your roof this hateful day never to return."

"Hain't I to be master in my own house?" said the husband sullenly.

"You are not to be a brute in your own house. I know you've struck me

before, but I endured it and said nothing about it because you were

drunk, but you are not drunk now, and if you lay a finger on me or my

son to-day, I will never darken your doors again."

The unnatural father saw that he had gone too far. He had not expected

such an issue. He had long been accustomed to follow the lead of his

brutal passions, but had now reached a point where he felt he must

stop, as his wife said. Turning on his heel, he sullenly took his

place at the table, muttering:

"It's a pretty pass when there's mutiny in a man's own house." Then to

his son, "You won't get a d--n cent out of me for your college

business, mind that."

Rose, the daughter, who had been crying and wringing her hands on the

door-step, now came timidly in, and at a sign from her mother she and

her brother went into another room.

The man ate for a while in dogged silence, but at last in a tone that

was meant to be somewhat conciliatory said:

"What the devil did you mean by putting the boy up to such

foolishness?"

"Hush!" said his wife imperiously, "I'm in no mood to talk with you

now."

"Oh, ah, indeed, a man can't even speak in his own house, eh? I guess

I'll take myself off to where I can have a little more liberty," and

he went out, harnessed his old white horse, and started for his

favorite groggery in the village.

His father had no sooner gone than Arden came out and said

passionately:

"It's no use, mother, I can't stand it; I must leave home to-day. I

guess I can make a living; at any rate I'd rather starve than pass

through such scenes."

The poor, overwrought woman threw herself down in a low chair and

sobbed, rocking herself back and forth.

"Wait till I die, Arden, wait till I die. I feel it won't be long.

What have I to live for but you and Rosy? And if you, my pride and

joy, go away after what has happened, it will be worse than death,"

and a tempest of grief shook her gaunt frame.

Arden was deeply moved. Boylike he had been thinking only of himself,

but now as never before he realized her hard lot, and in his warm,

impulsive heart there came a yearning tenderness for her such as he

had never felt before. He took her in his arms and kissed and

comforted her, till even her sore heart felt the healing balm of love

and ceased its bitter aching. At last she dried her eyes and said with

a faint smile: "With such a boy to pet me, the world isn't all flint

and thorns yet."

And Rosy came and kissed her too, for she was an affectionate child,

though a little inclined to be giddy and vain.

"Don't worry, mother," said Arden. "I will stay and take such good

care of you that you will have many years yet, and happier ones, too,

I hope," and he resolved to keep this promise, cost what it might.

"I hardly think I ought to ask it of you, though even the thought of

your going away breaks my heart." "I will stay," said the boy, almost

as passionately as he had said, "I will go." "I now see how much you

need a protector."

That night the father came home so stupidly drunk that they had to

half carry him to bed where he slept heavily till morning, and rose

considerably shaken and depressed from his debauch. The breakfast was

as silent as it had been stormy on the previous day. After it was

over, Arden followed his father to the door and said:

"I was a boy yesterday morning, but you made me a man, and a rather

ugly one too. I learned then for the first time that you occasionally

strike my mother. Don't you ever do it again, or it will be worse for

you, drunk or sober. I am not going to college, but will stay at home

and take care of her. Do we understand each other?"

The man was in such a low, shattered condition that his son's bearing

cowed him, and he walked off muttering:

"Young cocks crow mighty loud," but from that time forward he never

offered violence to his wife or children.

Still his father's conduct and character had a most disastrous effect

upon the young man. He was soured, because disappointed in his most

cherished purpose at an age when most youths scarcely have definite

plans. Many have a strong natural bent, and if turned aside from this,

they are more or less unhappy, and their duties, instead of being

wings to help life forward, become a galling yoke.

This was the case with Arden. Farm work, as he had learned it from his

father, was coarse, heavy drudgery, with small and uncertain returns,

and these were largely spent at the village rum shops in purchasing

slow perdition for the husband, and misery and shame for his wife and

children. In respectable Pushton, a drunkard's family, especially if

poor, had a very low social status. Mrs. Lacey and her children would

not accept of bad associations, so they had scarcely any. This

ostracism, within certain limits, is perhaps right. The preventive

penalties of vice can scarcely be too great, and men and women must be

made to feel that wrong-doing is certain to be followed by terrible

consequences. The fire is merciful in that it always burns, and sin

and suffering are inseparably linked. But the consequences of one

person's sin often blight the innocent. The necessity of this from our

various ties should be a motive, a hostage against sinning, and

doubtless restrains many a one who would go headlong under evil

impulses. But multitudes do slip off the paths of virtue, and helpless

wives, and often helpless husbands and children, writhe from wounds

made by those under sacred obligations to shield them. Upon the

families of criminals, society visits a mildew of coldness and scorn

that blights nearly all chance of good fruit. But society is very

unjust in its discriminations, and some of the most heinous sins in

God's sight are treated as mere eccentricities, or condemned in the

poor, but winked at in the rich. Gentlemen will admit to their parlors

men about whom they know facts which if true of a woman would close

every respectable door against her, and God frowns on the Christian

(?) society that makes such arbitrary and unjust distinctions. Cast

both out, till they bring forth fruits meet for repentance.

But we hope for little of a reformative tendency from the selfish

society of the world. Changing human fashion rules it, rather than the

eternal truth of the God of love. The saddest feature of all is that

the shifting code of fashion is coming more and more to govern the

church. Doctrine may remain the same, profession and intellectual

belief the same, while practical action drifts far astray. There are

multitudes of wealthy churches, that will no more admit associations

with that class among which our Lord lived and worked, than will

select society. They seem designed to help only respectable, well-connected sinners, toward heaven.

This tendency has two phases. In the cities the poor are practically

excluded from worshipping with the rich, and missions are established

for them as if they were heathen. There can be no objection to costly,

magnificent churches. Nothing is too good to be the expression of our

honor and love of God. But they should be like the cathedrals of

Europe, where prince and peasant may bow together on the same level

they have in the Divine presence. Christ made no distinction between

the rich and poor regarding their spiritual value and need, nor should

the Christianity named after Him. To the degree that it does, it is

not Christianity. The meek and lowly Nazarene is not its inspiration.

Perhaps the personage He told to get behind Him when promising the

"kingdoms of the world and the glory of them" has more to do with it.

The second phase of this tendency as seen in the country, is kindred

but unlike. Poverty may not be so great a bar, but moral delinquencies

are more severely visited, and the family under a cloud, through the

wrong-doing of one or more of its members, is treated very much as if

it had a perpetual pestilence. The highly respectable keep aloof. Too

often the quiet country church is not a sanctuary and place of refuge

for the victims either of their own or another's sin, a place where

the grasp of sympathy and words of encouragement are given; but rather

a place where they meet the cold critical gaze of those who are hedged

about with virtues and good connections. I hope I am wrong, but how is

it where you live, my reader? If a well-to-do thriving man of

integrity takes a fine place in your community, we all know how church

people will treat him. And what they do is all right. But society--the

world--will do the same. Is Christianity--are the followers of the

"Friend of publicans and sinners"--to do no more?

If in contrast a drunken wretch like Lacey with his wife and children

come in town on top of a wagon-load of shattered furniture, and all

are dumped down in a back alley to scramble into the shelter of a

tenement house as best they can, do you call upon them? Do you invite

them to your pew? Do you ever urge and encourage them to enter your

church? and do you make even one of its corners homelike and inviting?

I hope so; but, alas! that was not the general custom in Pushton, and

poor Mrs. Lacey had acquired the habit of staying at home, her

neighbors had become accustomed to call her husband a "dreadful man,"

and the family "very irreligious," and as the years passed they seemed

to be more and more left to themselves. Mr. Lacey had brought his wife

from a distant town where he had met and married her. She was a timid,

retiring woman, and time and kindness were needed to draw her out. But

no one had seemingly thought it worth while, and at the time our story

takes an interest in their affairs, there was a growing isolation.

All this had a very bad effect upon Arden. As he grew out of the

democracy of boyhood he met a certain social coldness and distance

which he learned to understand only too early, and soon returned this

treatment with increased coldness and aversion. Had it not been for

the influence of his mother and the books he read, he would have

inevitably fallen into low company. But he had promised his mother to

shun it. He saw its result in his father's conduct, and as he read,

and his mind matured, the narrow coarseness of such company became

repugnant. From time to time he was sorely tempted to leave the home

which his father made hateful in many respects, and try his fortunes

among strangers who would not associate him with a sot; but his love

for his mother kept him at her side, for he saw that her life was

bound up in him, and that he alone could protect her and his sister

and keep some sort of a shelter for them. In his unselfish devotion to

them his character was noble. In his harsh cynicism toward the world

and especially the church people, for whom he had no charity whatever

--in his utter hatred and detestation of his father--it was faulty,

though allowance must be made for him. He was also peculiar in other

respects, for his unguided reading was of a nature that fed his

imagination at the expense of his reasoning faculties. Though he

drudged in a narrow round, and his life was as hard and real as

poverty and his father's intemperance could make it, he mentally lived

and found his solace in a world as large and unreal as an uncurbed

fancy could create. Therefore his work was hurried through

mechanically in the old slovenly methods to which he had been

educated, he caring little for the results, as his father squandered

these; and when the necessary toil was over, he would lose all sense

of the sordid present in the pages of some book obtained from the

village library. As he drove his milk cart to and from town he would

sit in the chill drizzling rain, utterly oblivious of discomfort, with

a half smile upon his lips, as he pictured to himself some scene of

sunny aspect or gloomy castellated grandeur of which his own

imagination was the architect. The famous in history, the heroes and

heroines of fiction, and especially the characters of Shakespeare were

more familiar to him than the people among whom he lived. From the

latter he stood more and more aloof, while with the former he held

constant intercourse. He had little in common even with his sister,

who was of a very different temperament. But his tenderness toward his

mother never failed, and she loved him with the passionate intensity

of a nature to which love was all, but which had found little to

satisfy it on earth, and was ignorant of the love of God.

And so the years dragged on to Arden, and hiss twenty-first birthday

made him free from his father's control as he practically long had

been, but it also found him bound more strongly than ever by his

mother's love and need to his old home life.

CHAPTER IX

A DESERT ISLAND

The good cry that Edith indulged in on her way to the boat was a

relief to her heart, which had long been overburdened. But the

necessity of controlling her feelings, and the natural buoyancy of

youth, enabled her by the time they reached the wharf to see that the

furniture and baggage were properly taken care of. No one could detect

the traces of grief through her thick veil, or guess from her firm,

quiet tones, that she felt somewhat as Columbus might when going in

search of a new world. And yet Edith had a hope from her country life

which the others did not share at all.

When she was quite a child her feeble health had induced her father to

let her spend an entire summer in a farmhouse of the better class,

whose owner had some taste for flowers and fruit. These she had

enjoyed and luxuriated in as much as any butterfly of the season, and

as she romped with the farmer's children, roamed the fields and woods

in search of berries, and tumbled in the fragrant hay, health came

tingling back with a fullness and vigor that had never been lost. With

all her subsequent enjoyment, that summer still dwelt in her memory as

the halcyon period of her life, and it was with the country she

associated it. Every year she had longed for July, for then her father

would break away from business for a couple of months and take them to

a place of resort. But the fashionable watering-places were not at all

to her taste as compared with that old farmhouse, and whenever it was

possible she would wander off and make "disreputable acquaintances,"

as Mrs. Allen termed them, among the farmers' and laborers' families

in the vicinity of the hotel. But by this means she often obtained a

basket of fruit or bunch of flowers that the others were glad to share

in.

In accordance with her practical nature she asked questions as to the

habits, growth, and culture of trees and fruits, so that few city

girls situated as she had been knew as much about the products of the

garden. She had also haunted conservatories and green-houses as much

as her sisters had frequented the costly Broadway temples of fashion,

where counters are the altars to which the women of the city bring

their daily offerings; and as we have seen, a fruit store was a place

of delight to her.

The thought that she could now raise without limit fruit, flowers, and

vegetables on her own place was some compensation even for the trouble

they had passed through and the change in their fortunes.

Moreover she knew that because of their poverty she would have to

secure from her ground substantial returns, and that her gardening

must be no amateur trifling, but earnest work. Therefore, having found

a seat in the saloon of the boat, she drew out of her leather bag one

of her garden-books and some agricultural papers, and commenced

studying over for the twentieth time the labors proper for April.

After reading a while, she leaned back and closed her eyes and tried

to form such crude plans as were possible in her inexperience and her

ignorance of a place that she had not even seen.

Opening her eyes suddenly she saw old Hannibal sitting near and

regarding her wistfully.

"You are a foolish old fellow to stay with us," she said to him. "You

could have obtained plenty of nice places in the city. What made you

do it?"

"I'se couldn't gib any good reason to de world, Miss Edie, but de one

I hab kinder satisfies my ole black heart."

"Your heart isn't black, Hannibal."

"How you know dat?" he asked quickly.

"Because I've seen it often and often. Sometimes I think it is whiter

than mine. I now and then feel so desperate and wicked, that I am

afraid of myself."

"Dere now, you'se worried and worn-out and you tinks dat's bein'

wicked."

"No. I'm satisfied it is something worse than that. I wonder if God

does care about people who are in trouble, I mean practically, so as

to help them any?"

"Well, I specs he does," said Hannibal vaguely. "But den dere's so

many in trouble dat I'm afeard some hab to kinder look after

demselves." Then as if a bright thought struck him, he added, "I specs

he sorter lumps 'em jes as Massa Allen did when he said he was sorry

for de people burned up in Chicago. He sent 'em a big lot ob money and

den seemed to forget all about 'em."

Hannibal had never given much attention to religion, and perhaps was

not the best authority that Edith could have consulted. But his

conclusion seemed to secure her consent, for she leaned back wearily

and again closed her eyes, saying:

"Yes, we are mere human atoms, lost sight of in the multitude."

Soon her deep regular breathing showed that she was asleep, and

Hannibal muttered softly:

"Bress de child, dat will do her a heap more good dan askin' dem deep

questions," and he watched beside her like a large faithful

Newfoundland dog.

At last he touched her elbow and said, "We get off at de next landin',

and I guess we mus' be pretty nigh dere."

Edith started up much refreshed and asked, "What sort of an evening is

it?"

"Well, I'se sorry to say it's rainin' hard and berry dark."

To her dismay she also found that it was nearly nine o'clock. The boat

had been late in starting, and was so heavily laden as to make slow

progress against wind and tide. Edith's heart sank within her at the

thought of landing alone in a strange place that dismal night. It was

indeed a new experience to her. But she donned her waterproof, and the

moment the boat touched the wharf, hurried ashore, and stood under her

small umbrella, while her household gods were being hustled out into

the drenching rain. She knew the injury that must result to them

unless they could speedily be carried into the boat-house near. At

first there seemed no one to do this save Hannibal, who at once set to

work, but she soon observed a man with a lantern gathering up some

butter-tubs that the boat was landing, and she immediately appealed to

him for help.

"I'm not the dock-master," was the gruff reply.

"You are a man, are you not? and one that will not turn away from a

lady in distress. If my things stand long in this rain they will be

greatly injured."

The man thus adjured turned his lantern on the speaker, and while we

recognize the features of our acquaintance, Arden Lacey, he sees a

face on the old dock that quite startles him. If Edith had dropped

down with the rain, she could not have been more unexpected, and with

her large dark eyes flashing suddenly on him, and her appealing yet

half-indignant voice breaking in upon the waking dream with which he

was beguiling the outward misery of the night, it seemed as if one of

the characters of his fancy had suddenly become real. He who would

have passed Edith in surly unnoting indifference on the open street in

the garish light of day, now took the keenest interest in her. He had

actually been appealed to, as an ancient knight might have been, by a

damsel in distress, and he turned and helped her with a will, which,

backed by his powerful strength, soon placed her goods under shelter.

The lagging dock-master politicly kept out of the way till the work

was almost done and then bustled up and made some show of assisting in

time for any fees, if they should be offered, but Arden told him that

since he had kept out of sight so long, he might remain invisible,

which was the unpopular way the young man had.

When the last article had been placed under shelter Edith said:

"I appreciate your help exceedingly. How much am I to pay you for your

trouble?"

"Nothing," was the rather curt reply.

The appearance of a lady like Edith, with a beauty that seemed weird

and strange as he caught glimpses of her face by the fitful rays of

his lantern, had made a sudden and strong impression on his morbid

fancy and fitted the wild imaginings with which he had occupied the

dreary hour of waiting for the boat. The presence of her sable

attendant had increased these impressions. But when she took out her

purse to pay him his illusions vanished. Therefore the abrupt tone in

which he said "Nothing," and which was mainly caused by vexation at

the matter-of-fact world that continually mocked his unreal one.

"I don't quite understand you," said Edith. "I had no intention of

employing your time and strength without remuneration."

"I told you I was not the dock-master," said Arden rather coldly.

"He'll take all the fees you will give him. You appealed to me as a

man, and said you were in distress. I helped you as a man. Good-evening."

"Stay," said Edith hastily. "You seem not only a man, but a gentleman,

and I am tempted, in view of my situation, to trespass still further

on your kindness," but she hesitated a moment.

It perhaps had never been intimated to Arden before that he was a

gentleman, certainly never in the tone with which Edith spoke, and his

fanciful, chivalric nature responded at once to the touch of that

chord. With the accent of voice he ever used toward his mother, he

said:

"I am at your service."

"We are strangers here," continued Edith. "Is there any place near the

landing where we can get safe, comfortable lodging?"

"I am sorry to say there is not. The village is a mile away."

"How can we get there?"

"Isn't the stage down?" asked Arden of the dock-master.

"No!" was the gruff response.

"The night is so bad I suppose they didn't come. I would take you

myself in a minute if I had a suitable wagon."

"Necessity knows no choice," said Edith quickly. "I will go with you

in any kind of a wagon, and I surely hope you won't leave me on this

lonely dock in the rain."

"Certainly not," said Arden, reddening in the darkness that he could

be thought capable of such an act. "But I thought I could drive to the

village and send a carriage for you."

"I would rather go with you now, if you will let me," said Edith

decidedly.

"The best I have is at your service, but I fear you will be sorry for

your choice. I've only a board for a seat, and my wagon has no

springs. Perhaps I could get a low box for you to sit on."

"Hannibal can sit on the box. With your permission I will sit with

you, for I wish to ask you some questions."

Arden hung his lantern on a hook in front of his wagon, and helped or

partly lifted Edith over the wheel to the seat, which was simply a

board resting on the sides of the box. He turned a butter-tub upside

down for Hannibal, and then they jogged out from behind the boat-house

where he had sheltered his horses.

This was all a new experience to Arden. He had, from his surly

misanthropy, little familiarity with society of any kind, and since as

a boy he had romped with the girls at school he had been almost a

total stranger to all women save those in his own home. Most young men

would have been awkward louts under the circumstances. But this was

not true of Arden, for he had daily been holding converse in the books

he dreamed over with women of finer clay than he could have found at

Pushton. He would have been excessively awkward in a drawing-room or

any place of conventional resort, or rather he would have been sullen

and bearish, but the place and manner in which he had met Edith

accorded with his romantic fancy, and the darkness shielded his rough

exterior from observation.

Moreover, the presence of this flesh-and-blood woman at his side gave

him different sensations from the stately dames, or even the most

piquant maidens that had smiled upon him in the shadowy scenes of his

imagination; and when at times, as the wagon jolted heavily, she

grasped his arm for a second to steady herself, it seemed as if the

dusky little figure at his side was a sort of human electric battery

charged with that subtile fluid which some believe to be the material

life of the universe. Every now and then as they bounced over a stone,

the lantern would bob up and throw a ray on a face like those that had

looked out upon him from those plays of Shakespeare the scenes of

which are laid in Italy.

Thus the dark, chilly, rainy night was becoming the most luminous

period of his life. Reason and judgment act slowly, but imagination

takes fire.

But to poor Edith all was real and dismal enough, and she often sighed

heavily. To Arden each sigh was an appeal for sympathy. He had driven

as rapidly as he dared in the darkness to get her out of the rain, but

at last she said, clinging to his arm:

"Won't you drive slowly? The jolting has given me a pain in my side."

He was conscious of a new and peculiar sensation there also, though

not from jolting. He had been used to that in many ways all his life,

but thereafter they jogged forward on a walk through the drizzling

rain, and Edith, recovering her breath, and a sense of security, began

to asked the questions.

"Do you know where the cottage is that was formerly owned by Mr.

Jenks?"

"Oh, yes, it's not far from our house--between our house and the

village." Then as if a sudden thought struck him he added quickly, "I

heard it was sold; are you the owner?"

"Yes," said Edith a little coolly. She had expected to question and

not to be questioned. And yet she was very glad she had met one who

knew about her place. But she resolved to be non-committal till she

knew more about him.

"What sort of a house is it?" she asked after a moment. "I have never

seen it."

"Well, it's not very large, and I fear it is somewhat out of repair--at least it looks so, and I should think a new roof was needed."

Edith could not help saying pathetically, "Oh, dear! I'm so sorry."

Arden then added hastily, "But it's a kind of a pretty place too--a

great many fruit-trees and grapevines on it."

"So I've been told," said Edith. "And that will be its chief

attraction to me."

"Then you are going to live there?"

"Yes."

Arden's heart gave a sudden throb. Then he would see this mysterious

stranger often. But he smiled half bitterly in the darkness as he

queried, "What will she appear like in the daylight?"

Her next question broke the spell he was under utterly. They were

passing through the village and the little hotel was near, and she

naturally asked:

"To whom am I indebted for all this kindness? I am glad to know so

much as that you are my neighbor."

Suddenly and painfully conscious of his outward life and surroundings,

he answered briefly:

"My name is Arden Lacey. We have a small farm a little beyond your

cottage."

Wondering at his change of tone and manner, Edith still ventured to

ask:

"And do you know of any one who could bring my furniture and things up

to-morrow?"

As he sometimes did that kind of work, an impulse to see more of her

impelled him to say:

"I suppose I can do it. I work for a living."

"I am sure that is nothing against you," said Edith kindly.

"You will not live long in Pushton before learning that there is

something against us," was the bitter reply. "But that need not

prevent my working for you, as I do for others. If you wish, I will

make a fire in your house early, to take off the chill and dampness,

and then go for your furniture. The people here will send you out in a

carriage." "I shall be greatly obliged if you will do so and let me

pay you."

"Oh, certainly, I will charge the usual rates."

"Well, then, how much for to-night?" said Edith as she stood in the

hotel door.

"To-night is another affair," and he jumped into his wagon and rattled

away in the darkness, his lantern looking like a "will-o'-the-wisp"

that might vanish altogether.

The landlord received Edith and her attendant with a gruff civility,

and gave her in charge of his wife, who was a bustling red-faced woman

with a sort of motherly kindness about her.

"Why, you poor child," she said to Edith, turning her round before the

light, "you're half drowned. You must have something hot right away,

or you'll take your death o' cold," and with something of her

husband's faith in whiskey, she soon brought Edith a hot punch that

for a few moments seemed to make the girl's head spin, but as it was

followed by strong tea and toast, she felt none the worse, and danger

from the chill and wet was effectually disposed of.

As she sat sipping her tea before a red-hot stove, she told, in answer

to the landlady's questions, how she had got up from the boat.

"Who is this Lacey, and what is there against them?" she asked

suddenly.

The hostess went across the hall, opened the bar-room door, and

beckoned Edith to follow her.

In a chair by the stove sat a miserable bloated wreck of a man,

drivelling and mumbling in a drunken lethargy.

"That's his father," said the woman in a whisper. "When he gets as bad

as that he comes here because he knows my husband is the only one as

won't turn him out of doors."

An expression of intense disgust flitted across Edith's face, and by

the necessary law of association poor Arden sank in her estimation

through the foulness of his father's vice.

"Is there anything against the son?" asked Edith in some alarm. "I've

engaged him to bring up my furniture and trunks. I hope he's honest."

"Oh, yes, he's honest enough, and he'd be mighty mad if anybody

questioned that, but he's kind o' soured and ugly, and don't notice

nobody nor nothing. The son and Mrs. Lacey keep to themselves, the man

does as you see, but the daughter, who's a smart, pretty girl, tries

to rise above it all, and make her way among the rest of the girls;

but she has a hard time of it, I guess, poor child."

"I don't wonder," said Edith, "with such a father."

But between the punch and fatigue, she was glad to take refuge from

the landlady's garrulousness, and all her troubles in quiet sleep.

The next morning the storm was passing away in broken masses of cloud,

through which the sun occasionally shone in April-like uncertainty.

After an early breakfast she and Hannibal were driven in an open wagon

to what was to be her future home--the scene of unknown joys and

sorrows.

The most memorable places, where the mightiest events of the world

have transpired, can never have for us the interest of that humble

spot where the little drama of our own life will pass from act to act

till our exit.

Most eagerly did Edith note everything as revealed by the broad light

of day. The village, though irregular, had a general air of

thriftiness and respectability. The street through which she was

riding gradually fringed off, from stores and offices, into neat

homes, farmhouses, and here and there the abodes of the poor, till at

last, three-quarters of a mile out, she saw a rather quaint little

cottage with a roof steeply sloping and a long low porch.

"That's your place, miss," said the driver.

Edith's intent eyes took in the general effect with something of the

practiced rapidity with which she mastered a lady's toilet on the

avenue.

In spite of her predisposition to be pleased, the prospect was

depressing. The season was late and patches of discolored snow lay

here and there, and were piled up along the fences. The garden and

trees had a neglected look. The vines that clambered up the porch had

been untrimmed of the last year's growth, and sprawled in every

direction. The gate hung from one hinge, and many palings were off the

fence, and all had a sodden, dingy appearance from the recent rains.

The house itself looked so dilapidated and small, in contrast with

their stately mansion on Fifth Avenue, that irrepressible tears came

into her eyes, as she murmured:

"It will kill mother just to see it."

Old Hannibal said in a low, encouraging tone, "It'll look a heap

better next June, Miss Edie."

But Edith dropped her veil to hide her feelings, and shook her head.

They got down before the rickety gate, took out the basket of

provisions which Hannibal had secured, paid the driver, who splashed

away through the mud as a boat might that had landed and left two

people on a desert island. They walked up the oozy path with hearts

about as chill and empty as the unfurnished cottage before them.

But utter repulsiveness had been taken away by a bright fire that

Arden had kindled on the hearth of the largest room; and when lighting

it he had been so romantic as to dream of the possibility of kindling

a more sacred fire in a heart that he knew now to be as cold to him as

the chilly room in which he shivered.

Poor Arden! If he could have seen the expression on Edith's face the

night previous, as she looked on his besotted father, he would have

cursed more bitterly than ever what he termed the blight of his life.

CHAPTER X

EDITH BECOMES A "DIVINITY"

As the wrecked would hasten up the strand and explore eagerly in

various directions in order to gain some idea of the nature and

resources of the place where they might spend months and even years,

so Edith hurriedly passed from one room to another, looking the house

over first, as their place of refuge and centre of life, and then went

out to a spot from which she could obtain a view of the garden, the

little orchard, and the pasture field.

The house had three rooms on the first floor, as many on the second,

and a very small attic. There was also a pretty good cellar, though it

looked to Edith like a black, dismal hole, and was full of rubbish and

old boxes.

The entrance of the house was at the commencement of the porch, which

ran along under the windows of the large front room. Back of this was

one much smaller, and doors opened from both the apartments named into

a long and rather narrow room running the full depth of the house, and

which had been designed as the kitchen. With the families that would

naturally occupy a house of this character, it would have been the

general living-room. To Edith's eyes, accustomed to magnificent spaces

and lofty ceilings, these apartments seemed stifling dingy cells. The

walls were broken in places and discolored by smoke. With the

exception of the large room there were no places for open fires, but

only holes for stovepipes.

"How can such a place as this ever look homelike?"

The muddy garden, with its patches of snow, its forlorn and neglected

air, its spreading vines and the thickly standing stalks of last

year's weeds, was even less inviting. Edith had never seen the country

in winter, and the gardens of her experience were full of green,

beautiful life. The orchard looked not only gaunt and bare, but very

untidy. The previous year had been most abundant in fruit, and the

trees were left to bear at will. Therefore many of the limbs were

wholly or partly broken off, and lay scattered where they fell, or

still hung by a little of the woody fibre and bark.

Edith came back to the fire from the survey of her future home, not

only chilled in body by the raw April winds, but more chilled in

heart. Though she had not expected summer greenness and a sweet

inviting home, yet the reality was so dreary and forbidding, from its

necessary contrast with the past, that she sank down on the floor, and

buried her head in her lap in an uncontrollable passion of grief.

Hannibal was out gathering wood to replenish the fire, and it was a

luxury to be alone a few minutes with her sorrow.

But soon she had the consciousness that she was not alone, and looking

up, saw Arden in the door, with a grave troubled face. Hastily turning

from him, and wiping away her tears, she said rather coldly:

"You should have knocked. The house is my home, if it is empty."

His face changed instantly to its usual hard sullen aspect, and he

said briefly:

"I did knock."

"The landlady has told her all about us," he thought, "and she rejects

sympathy and fellowship from such as we are."

But Edith's feeling had only been annoyance that a stranger had seen

her emotion, so she said quickly, "I beg your pardon. We have had

trouble, but I don't give way in this manner often. Have you brought a

load?"

"Yes. If your servant will help me I will bring the things in."

As he and Hannibal carried in heavy rolls of carpet and other

articles, Edith removed as far as possible the traces of her grief,

and soon began to scan by the light of day with some curiosity her

acquaintance of the previous evening. He was the very opposite to

herself in appearance. Her eyes were large and dark. He had a rather

small but piercing blue eye. His locks were light and curly, and his

beard sandy. Her hair was brown and straight. He was fully six feet

tall, while she was only of medium height. And yet Edith was not a

brunette, but possessed a complexion of transparent delicacy which

gave her the fragile appearance characteristic of so many American

girls. His face was much tamed by exposure to March winds, but his

brow was as white as hers. In his morbid tendency to shun every one,

he usually kept his eyes fixed on the ground so as to appear not to

see people, and this, with his habitual frown, gave a rather heavy and

repelling expression to his face.

"He would make a very good representative of the laboring classes,"

she thought, "if he hadn't so disagreeable an expression."

It had only dimly dawned upon poor Edith as yet that she now belonged

to the "laboring classes."

But her energetic nature soon reacted against idle grieving, and her

pale cheeks grew rosy, and her face full of eager life as she assisted

and directed.

"If I only had one or two women to help me we could soon get things

settled," she said, "and I have so little time before the rest come."

Then she added suddenly to Arden, "Haven't you sisters?"

"My sister does not go out to service," said Arden proudly.

"Neither do I," said the shrewd Edith, "but I would be willing to help

any one in such an emergency as I am in," and she glanced keenly to

see the effect of this speech, while she thought, "What airs these

people put on!"

Arden's face changed instantly. Her words seemed like a ray of

sunlight falling on a place before shadowed, for the sullen frowning

expression passed into one almost of gentleness, as he said:

"That puts things in a different light. I am sure Rose and mother both

will be willing to help you as neighbors," and he started for another

load, going around by the way of his home and readily obtaining from

his mother and sister a promise to assist Edith after dinner.

Edith smiled to herself and said, "I have found the key to his surly

nature already." She had, and to many other natures also. Kindness and

human fellowship will unbar and unbolt where all other forces may

clamor in vain.

Arden went away in a maze of new sensations. This one woman of all the

world beside his mother and sister that he had come to know somewhat

was to him a strange, beautiful mystery. Edith was in many respects

conventional, as all society girls are, but it was the conventionality

of a sphere of life that Arden knew only through books, and she seemed

to him utterly different from the ladies of Pushton as he understood

them from his slight acquaintance. This difference was all in her

favor, for he cherished a bitter and unreasonable prejudice against

the young girls of his neighborhood as vain, shallow creatures who

never read, and thought of nothing save dress and beaux. His own

sister in fact had helped to confirm these impressions, for while he

was fond of her and kind, he had no great admiration for her, saying

in his sweeping cynicism, "She is like the rest of them." If he had

met Edith only in the street and in conventional ways, stylishly

dressed, he would scarcely have noticed her. But her half-indignant,

half-pathetic appeal to him on the dock, the lonely ride in which she

had clung to his arm for safety, her tears, and the manner in which

she had last spoken to him, had all combined to pierce thoroughly his

shell of sullen reserve; and, as we have said, his vivid imagination

had taken fire.

Edith and Hannibal worked hard the rest of the forenoon, and her

experienced old attendant was invaluable. Edith herself, though having

little practical knowledge of work of any kind, had vigor and natural

judgment, and her small white hands accomplished more than one would

suppose.

So Arden wonderingly thought on his return with a second load, as he

saw her lift and handle things that he knew to be heavy. Her short,

close-fitting working-dress outlined her fine figure to advantage, and

with complexion bright and dazzling with exercise, she seemed to him

some frail fairylike creature doomed by a cruel fate to unsuited toil

and sorrows. But Edith was very matter-of-fact, and had never in all

her life thought of herself as a fairy.

Arden went home to dinner, and by one o'clock Edith said to Hannibal:

"There is one good thing about the place if no other. It gives one a

savage appetite. What have you got in the basket?"

"A scrumptious lunch, Miss Edie. I told de landlady you'se used to

havin' things mighty nice, and den I found a hen's nest in de barn dis

mornin'."

"I hope you didn't take the eggs, Hannibal," said Edith slyly.

"Sartin I did, Miss Edie, cause if I didn't de rats would."

"Perhaps the landlady would also if you had shown them to her."

"Miss Edie," said Hannibal solemnly, "findin' a hen's nest is like

findin' a gold mine. It belongs to de one dat finds it."

"I am afraid that wouldn't stand in law. Suppose we were arrested for

robbing hens' nests. That wouldn't be a good introduction to our new

neighbors."

"Now, Miss Edie," said Hannibal, with an injured air, "you don't spec

I do a job like dat so bungly as to get cotched at it?"

"Oh, very well," said Edith, laughing, "since you have conformed to

the morality of the age, it must be all right, and a fresh egg would

be a rich treat now that it can be eaten with a clear conscience. But,

Hannibal, I wish you would find a gold mine out in the garden."

"I guess you'se find dat with all your readin' about strawberries and

other yarbs."

"I hope so," said Edith with a sigh, "for I don't see how we are going

to live here year after year."

"You'se be rich again. De men wid de long pusses ain't agoin' to look

at your black eyes for nothin'," and Hannibal chuckled knowingly.

The color faintly deepened in Edith's cheeks, but she said with some

scorn, "Men with long purses want girls with the same. But who are

these?"

Coming up the path they saw a tall middle-aged woman, and by her side

a young girl of about eighteen who was a marked contrast to her in

appearance.

"Dey's his moder and sister. You will drive tings dis arternoon."

Mrs. Lacey and her daughter entered with some little hesitancy and

embarrassment, but Edith, with the poise of an accomplished lady, at

once put them at ease by saying:

"It is exceedingly kind of you to come and help, and I appreciate it

very much."

"No one should refuse to be neighborly," said Mrs. Lacey quietly.

"And to tell the truth I was delighted to come," said Rose, "the

winter has been so long and dull."

"Oh, dear!" thought Edith, "if you find them so, what will be our

fate?"

Mrs. Lacey undid a bundle and took out a teapot from which the steam

yet oozed faintly, and Rose undid another containing some warm

buttered biscuits, Mrs. Lacey saying, "I thought your lunch might seem

a little cold and cheerless, so I brought these along."

"Now that _is_ kind," said Edith, so cordially that their faces

flushed with that natural pleasure which we all feel when our little

efforts for others are appreciated. To them it was intensified, for

Edith was a grand city lady, and the inroads that she made on the

biscuits, and the zest with which she sipped her tea, showed that her

words had the ring of truth.

"Do sit down and eat, while things are nice and warm," she said to

Hannibal. "There's no use in our putting on airs now," but Hannibal

insisted on waiting upon her as when he was butler in the great

dining-room on the avenue, and when she was through, carried the

things off to the empty kitchen, and took his "bite" on a packing box,

prefacing it as his nearest approach to grace by an indignant grunt

and profession of his faith.

"Dis ole niggah eat before her? Not much! She's quality now as much as

eber."

But the world and Hannibal were at variance on account of a sum of

subtraction which had taken away from Edith's name the dollar symbol.

Edith set to work, her helpers now increased to three, with renewed

zest, and from time to time stole glances at the mother and daughter

to see what the natives were like.

They were very different in appearance: the mother looking prematurely

old, and she also seemed bent and stooping under the heavy burdens of

life. Her dark blue eyes had a weary, pathetic look, as if some sorrow

was ever before them. Her cheek bones were prominent and her cheeks

sunken, and the thin hair, brushed plainly under her cap, was streaked

with gray. Her quietness and reserve seemed rather the result of a

crushed, sad heart than of natural lack of feeling.

The daughter was in the freshest bloom of youth, and was not unlike

the flower she was named after, when, as a dewy bud, it begins to

develop under the morning sun. Though not a beautiful girl, there was

a prettiness, a rural breeziness about her, that would cause any one

to look twice as she passed. The wind ever seemed to be in her light

flaxen curls, and her full rounded figure suggested superabundant

vitality, an impression increased by her quick, restless motions. Her

complexion reminded you of strawberries and cream, and her blue eyes

had a slightly bold and defiant expression. She felt the blight of her

father's course also, but it acted differently on her temperament.

Instead of timidly shrinking from the world like her mother, or

sullenly ignoring it like her brother, she was for going into society

and compelling it to recognize and respect her.

"I have done nothing wrong," she said; "I insist on people treating me

in view of what I am myself," and in the sanguine spirit of youth she

hoped to carry her point. Therefore her manner was a little self-asserting, which would not have been the case had she not felt that

she had prejudice to overcome. Unlike her brother, she cared little

for books, and had no ideal world, but lived vividly in her immediate

surroundings. The older she grew, the duller and more monotonous did

her home life seem. She had little sympathy from her brother; her

mother was a sad, silent woman, and her father a daily source of

trouble and shame. Her education was very imperfect, and she had no

resource in this, while her daily work seemed a tiresome round that

brought little return. Her mother attended to the more important

duties and gave to her the lighter tasks, which left her a good deal

of leisure. She had no work that stimulated her, no training that made

her thorough in any department of labor, however humble. From a

friend, a dressmaker in the village, she obtained a little fancy work

and sewing, and the proceeds resulting, and all her brother gave her,

she spent in dress. The sums were small enough in all truth, and yet

with the marvellous ingenuity that some girls, fond of dress, acquire,

she made a very little go a great way, and she would often appear in

toilets that were quite effective. With those of her own age and sex

in her narrow little circle, she was not a special favorite, but she

was with the young men, for she was bright, chatty, and had the knack

of putting awkward fellows at ease. She kept her little parlor as

pretty and inviting as her limited materials permitted, and with a

growing imperiousness gave the rest of the family, and especially her

father, to understand that this parlor was her domain, and that she

would permit no intrusion. Clerks from the village and farmers' sons

would occasionally drop in of an evening, though they preferred taking

her out to ride where they could see her away from her home. But the

more respectable young men, with anxious mothers and sisters, were

rather shy of poor Rose, and none seemed to care to go beyond a mild

flirtation with a girl whose father was "on the rampage," as they

expressed it, most of the time. On one occasion, when she had two

young friends spending the evening, her father came home reckless and

wild with drink, and his language toward the young men was so

shocking, and his manner in general so outrageous, that they were glad

to get away. If Arden had not come home and collared his father,

carrying him off to his room by his almost irresistible strength,

Rose's parlor might have become a sad wreck, literally as well as

socially. As it was, it seemed deserted for a long time, and she felt

very bitter about it. In her fearless frankness, her determination not

to succumb to her sinister surroundings (and perhaps from the lack of

a sensitive delicacy), she reproached the same young men when she met

them for staying away, saying, "It's a shame to treat a girl as if she

were to blame for what she can't help."

But Rose's ambition had put on a phase against which circumstances

were too strong, and she was made to feel in her struggle to gain a

social footing that her father's leprosy had tainted her, and her

brother's "ugly, sullen disposition," as it was termed, was a

hindrance also. She had an increasing desire to get away among

strangers, where she could make her own way on her own merits, and the

city of New York seemed to her a great Eldorado, where she might find

her true career. Some very showily dressed, knowing-looking girls,

that she had met at a picnic, had increased this longing for the city.

Her mother and brother thought her restless, vain, and giddy, but she

was as good and honest a girl at heart as breathed, only her vigorous

nature chafed at repression, wanted outlets, and could not settle down

for life to cook, wash, and sew for a drunken father, a taciturn

brother, or even a mother whose companionship was depressing, much as

she was loved.

Rose welcomed the request of her brother, as helping Edith would cause

a ripple in the current of her dull life, and give her a chance of

seeing one of the grand city ladies, without the dimness and vagueness

of distance, and she scanned Edith with a stronger curiosity than was

bestowed upon herself. The result was rather depressing to poor Rose,

for, having studied with her quick nice eye Edith's exquisite manner

and movements, she sighed to herself:

"I'm not such a lady as this girl, and perhaps never can be."

While Edith was very kind and cordial to the Laceys, she felt, and

made them feel, that there was a vast social distance between them.

Even practical Edith had not yet realized her poverty, and it would

take her some time to doff the manner of the condescending lady.

They accomplished a great deal that afternoon, but it takes much time

and labor to make even a small empty house look home-like. Edith had

taken the smallest room upstairs, and by evening it was quite in order

for her occupation, she meaning to take Zell in with her. Work had

progressed in the largest upper room, which she designed for her

mother and Laura. Mrs. Lacey and Hannibal were in the kitchen getting

that arranged, they very rightly concluding that this was the

mainspring in the mechanism of material living, and should be put in

readiness at once. Arden had been instructed to purchase and bring

from the village a cooking-stove, and Hannibal's face shone with

something like delight, as by five o'clock he had a wood fire

crackling underneath a pot of water, feeling that the terra firma of

comfort was at last reached. He could now _soak_ in his favorite

beverage of tea, and make Miss Edie quite "pertlike" too when she was

tired.

Mrs. Lacey worked silently. Rose was inclined to be chatty and draw

Edith out in regard to city life. She responded good-naturedly as long

as Rose confined herself to generalities, but was inclined to be

reticent on their own affairs.

Before dark the Laceys prepared to return, the mother saying gravely:

"You may feel it too lonely to stay by yourself. Our house is not very

inviting, and my husband's manner is not always what I could wish, but

such as it is, you will be welcome in it till the rest of your family

comes."

"You are very kind to a stranger," said Edith, heartily, "but I am not

a bit afraid to stay here since I have Hannibal as protector," and

Hannibal, elated by this compliment, looked as if he might be a very

dragon to all intruders. "Moreover," continued Edith, "you have helped

me so _splendidly_ that I shall be very comfortable, and they will be

here to-morrow night."

Mrs. Lacey bowed silently, but Rose said in her sprightly voice, from

the doorway:

"I'll come and help you all day to-morrow."

Arden was still to bring one more load. The setting sun, with the

consistency of an April day, had passed into a dark cloud which soon

came driving on with wind and rain, and the thick drops dashed against

the windows as if thrown from a vast syringe, while the gutter gurgled

and groaned with the sudden rush of water.

"Oh, dear! how dismal!" sighed Edith, looking out in the gathering

darkness. Then she saw that the loaded wagon had just stopped at the

gate, and in dim outline Arden sat in the storm as if he had been a

post. "It's too bad," she said impatiently, "my things will all get

wet." After a moment she added: "Why don't he come in? Don't he know

enough to come in out of the rain?"

"Well, Miss Edie, he's kind o' quar," said Hannibal, "I'se jes done

satisfied he's quar."

But the shower ceased suddenly, and Arden dismounted, secured his

horses, and soon appeared at the door with a piece of furniture.

"Why, it's not wet," said Edith with surprise.

"I saw appearances of rain, and so borrowed a piece of canvas at the

dock."

"But you didn't put the canvas over yourself," said Edith, looking at

his dripping form, grateful enough now to bestow a little kindness

without the idea of policy. "As soon as you have brought in the load I

insist on your staying and taking a cup of tea."

He gave his shoulders an indifferent shrug, saying, "A little cold

water is the least of my troubles." Then he added, stealing a timid

glance at her, "But you are very kind. People seldom think of their

teamsters."

"The more shame to them then," said Edith. "I at least can feel a

kindness if I can't make much return. It was very good of you to

protect my furniture, and I appreciate your care. Besides your mother

and sister have been helping me all the afternoon, and I am oppressed

by my obligations to you all."

"I am sorry you feel that way," he said briefly, and vanished in the

darkness after another load.

Soon all was safely housed, and he said, about to depart, "There is

one more load; I will bring that to-morrow."

From the kitchen she called, "Stay, your tea will be ready in a

moment."

"Do not put yourself to that truble," he answered, at the same time

longing to stay. "Mother will have supper ready for me." He was so

diffident that he needed much encouragement, and moreover he was

morbidly sensitive.

But as she turned she caught his wistful glance, and thought to

herself, "Poor fellow! he's cold and hungry." With feminine shrewdness

she said, "Now, Mr. Lacey, I shall feel slighted if you don't take a

cup of my tea, for see, I have made it myself. It's the one thing

about housekeeping that I understand. Your mother brought me a nice

cup at noon, and I enjoyed it very much. I am going to pay that debt

now to you."

"Well--if you really wish it"--said Arden hesitatingly, with another

of his bright looks, and color even deeper than the ruddy firelight

warranted.

"My conscience!" thought Edith, "how suddenly his face changes. He is

'quar,' as Hannibal says." But she settled matters by saying, "I shall

feel hurt if you don't. You must let there be at least some show of

kindness on my part, as well as on yours and your friends'."

There came in again a delicate touch of that human fellowship which he

had never found in the world, and had seemingly repelled, but which

his soul was thirsting for with an intensity never so realized before,

and this faintest semblance of human companionship and sympathy seemed

inexpressibly sweet to his sore and lonely heart.

He took the cup from her as if it had been a sacrament, and was about

to drink it standing, but she placed a chair at the table and said:

"No, sir, you must sit down there in comfort by the fire."

He did so as if in a dream. The whole scene was taking a powerful hold

on his imagination.

"Hannibal," she cried, raising her voice in a soft, bird-like call,

and from the dim kitchen whence certain spluttering sounds had

preceded him, Hannibal appeared with a heaping plate of buttered

toast.

"With your permission," she said, "I will sit down and take a cup of

tea with you, in a neighborly way, for I wish to ask you some more

questions, and tea, you know, is a great incentive to talk," and she

took a chair on the opposite side of the table, while Hannibal stood a

little in the background to wait on them with all the formality of the

olden time.

The wood fire blazed and crackled, and threw its flickering light over

Edith's fair face, and intensified her beauty, as her features gleamed

out, or faded, as the flames rose and fell. Hannibal stood motionless

behind her chair as if he might have been an Ethiopian slave attendant

on a young sultana. To Arden's aroused imagination, it seemed like one

of the scenes of his fancy, and he was almost afraid to move or speak,

lest all should vanish, and he find himself plodding along the dark

muddy road.

"What is the matter?" she asked curiously. "Why don't you drink your

tea?"

"It all seems as strange and beautiful as a fairy tale," he said,

looking at her earnestly.

Her hearty laugh and matter-of-fact tone dispelled his illusion, as

she said:

"It's all dreadfully real to me. I feel as if I had done more work to-day than in all my life before, and we have only made a beginning. I

want to ask you about the place and the garden, and how to get things

done," and she plied him well with the most practical questions.

Sometimes he answered a little incoherently, for through them all he

saw a face full of strange weird beauty, as the firelight flickered

upon it, and gave a star-like lustre to the large dark eyes.

Hannibal, in the background, grinned and chuckled silently, as he saw

Arden's dazed, wondering admiration, saying to himself, "Dey ain't

used to such young ladies as mine, up here--it kind o' dazzles 'em."

At last, as if breaking away from the influence of a spell, Arden

suddenly rose, turning upon Edith one of those warm, bright looks that

he sometimes gave his mother, and said, "You have been very kind;

good-night," and was gone in a moment. But the night was luminous

about him. Along the muddy road, in the old barn as he cared for his

horses, in his poor little room at home, to which he soon retired, he

saw only the fair face of Edith, with the firelight playing upon it,

with the vividness of one looking directly upon an exquisite cabinet

picture, and before that picture his heart was inclined to bow, in the

most devoted homage.

Edith's only comment was, "He is 'quar,' Hannibal, as you said."

Wearied with the long day's work, she soon found welcome and dreamless

rest.

CHAPTER XI

MRS. ALLEN'S POLICY

True to her promise, Rose helped Edith all the next day, and while she

worked, the frank-hearted girl poured out the story of her troubles,

and Edith came to have a greater respect and sympathy for her "kind

and humble neighbors" as she characterized them in her own mind. Still

with her familiarity with the farming class, kept up since her summer

in the country as a child, she made a broad distinction between them

and the mere laborer. Moreover, the practical girl wished to

conciliate the Laceys and every one else she could, for she had a

presentiment that there were many trials before them, and that they

would need friends. She said in answer to Rose:

"I never realized before that the world was so full of trouble. We

have seen plenty of late."

"One can bear any kind of trouble better than a daily shame," said

Rose bitterly.

For some unexplained reason Edith thought of Zell and Mr. Van Dam with

a sudden pang.

Arden brought his last load and watched eagerly for her appearance,

fearing that there might be some great falling off in the vision of

the past evening.

But to his eyes the girl he was learning to glorify presented as fair

an exterior in the garish day, and the reality of her beauty became a

fixed fact in his consciousness, and his fancy had already begun to

endow her with angelic qualities. With all her vanity, even sorrowful

Edith would have laughed heartily at his ideal of her. It was one of

the hardest ordeals of his life to take the money she paid him, and

she saw and wondered at his repugnance.

"You will never get rich," she said, "if you are so prodigal in work,

and so spare in your charges."

"I would rather not take anything," he said dubiously, holding the

money, as if it were a coal of fire, between his thumb and finger.

"Then I must find some one who will do business on business

principles," she said coldly. "If the fellow has any sentimental

nonsense about him, I'll soon cure that," she thought.

Arden colored, thrust his money carelessly into his pocket as if it

were of no account, and said briefly, "Good-morning."

But when alone he put the money in the innermost part of his

pocketbook, and when his father asked him for some of it, he sternly

answered:

"No, sir, not a cent." Nor did he spend it himself; why he kept it

could scarcely have been explained. He was simply acting according to

the impulses of a morbid romantic nature that had been suddenly and

deeply impressed. The mother's quick eye detected a change in him and

she asked:

"What do you think of our new neighbor?"

"Mother," said he fervently, "she is an angel."

"My poor boy," said she anxiously, "take care. Don't let your fancy

run away with you."

"Oh," said he with assumed indifference, "one can have a decided

opinion of a good thing as well as a bad thing, without making a fool

of one's self."

But the mother saw with a half-jealous pang that her son's heart was

awaking to a new and stronger love than her own.

Mrs. Allen with Zell and Laura was to come by the boat that evening,

and Edith's heart yearned after them as her kindred. Now that she had

had a little experience of loneliness and isolation, she deeply

regretted her former harshness and impatience, saying to herself, "It

is harder for them than for me. They don't like the country, and don't

care anything about a garden," and she purposed to be very gentle and

long-suffering.

If good resolutions were only accomplished certainties as soon as

made, how different life would be!

Arden had ordered a close carriage that she might go down and meet

them, and had agreed to bring up their trunks and boxes in his large

wagon.

The boat fortunately landed under the clear starlight on this

occasion, and feeble Mrs. Allen was soon seated comfortably in the

carriage. But her every breath was a sigh, and she regarded the

martyrs as a favored class in comparison with herself. Laura still had

her look of dreary apathy; but Zell's face wore an expression of

interest in the new scenes and experiences, and she plied Edith with

many questions as she rode homeward. Mrs. Allen brought a servant up

with her who was condemned to ride with Arden, much to their mutual

disgust.

"Oh, dear!" sighed Edith as they rode along. "It's a dreadful come-down for us all and I don't know how you are going to stand it,

mother."

Mrs. Allen's answer was a long inarticulate sigh.

When she reached the house and entered the room where supper was

awaiting them, she glanced around as a prisoner might on being thrust

into a cell in which years must be spent, and then she dropped into a

chair, sobbing--

"How different--how different from all my past!" and for a few moments

they all cried together. As with Edith at first, so now again the new

home was baptized with tears as if dedicated to sorrow and trouble.