“It’ll happen, just the same,” he assured her, grimly. “Nothing on earth

that we’ve done has been able to make her see this cub except as an

angel—a persecuted angel. She really meant it when she called him

that;—on my soul, I believe she did! We’ve told her the truth about him

over and over till the repetition makes us sick. What effect does it

have on her? We’ve told her what his own father said about him, that

he’s ‘absolutely no good on earth and never will be!’ What help was

that? Then we tried having other people tell her their opinions of

Crabbe. It only made her hate the other people. We’ve tried indulgence;

we made the greatest effort to interest her in other things; we’ve tried

to get her interested in other young men; we’ve tried giving her

anything she wanted; we’ve tried to get her to travel; offered her

Europe, Asia, and the whole globe; and then when she wouldn’t go and

everything else we tried was no good, we tried taking the whole thing as

a joke—making good-natured fun of this cub; trying to make her see him

as ridiculous—and the end of that was her first attempt to run away

with him! Well, she did it again, and if we keep on as we’re going

she’ll do it _again_! What’s our alternative? I ask you!”

His wife could only moan that she didn’t know;—her mind as well as her

emotion was exhausted, she said; and the only thing she could suggest

now was that he should try to get Lily to come down to dinner. He

assented gloomily, “Well, I’ll see, though it makes me sick to listen to

her when she’s like this,” and went upstairs to his daughter’s room.

After he had knocked repeatedly upon the door, obtaining only the

significant response of silence, he turned the knob, found himself

admitted into darkness, and pressed a button upon the wall just inside

the door. The light, magically instantaneous, glowed from the

apricot-coloured silk shades of two little lamps on slender tables, one

at each side of the daintily painted bed;—and upon the soft green

coverlet, with her fair and delicate head upon the lace pillow, lay his

daughter. With hands pressed palm to palm upon her breast, her attitude

was that of a crusader’s lady in stone upon a tomb; and the closed eyes,

the exquisite white profile, thin with suffering, the slender, long

outline of her figure, could not fail to touch a father’s heart. For the

wasting of long-drawn anguish was truly sculptured there, even though

the attitude might have been a little calculated.

“Lily,” he said, gently, as he approached the bed, “your mother wants to

know if you wouldn’t like to come down to dinner.”

The dark eyelids remained as they were; but the pale lips just moved.

“No, thank you.”

“You won’t?”

“No.”

“Then shall we send your dinner up to you, Lily?”

“No, thank you,” she whispered.

He had come into the room testily, in a gloomy impatience; but she

seemed so genuinely in pain and so pathetically fragile a contestant

against her solid mother and against his own robust solidity that

suddenly he lost every wish to chide her, even every wish to instruct

her. He became weak with compassion, and the only wish left in him was

the wish to make her happier. He sat down upon a painted little chair

beside the bed.

“Lily, child,” he said, huskily, “for pity’s sake, what is it you want?”

And again the pathetic lips just moved.

“You know, Papa.”

There was something in the whispered word “Papa” that cried to him of

sweetness under torture, and cried of it with so keen a sound that he

groaned aloud. “O, baby girl!” he said, succumbing then and there, when

he had least expected such a thing to happen to him. “We _can’t_ let you

suffer like this! Don’t you know we’ll do anything on earth to make you

happy?”

“No. You wouldn’t do the one thing—Papa?”

“I said anything,” he groaned.

X

LILY’S ALMOST FIRST ENGAGEMENT

WHEN he came downstairs to his wife, five minutes later, he told her

desperately to what he had consented.

“There isn’t any alternative,” he said, in his defence against Mrs.

Dodge’s outcry. “It was going to happen anyhow, in spite of everything

we could do, and she’s grown so _thin_—I hadn’t realized it, but she’s

lost heaven knows how many pounds! You don’t want the child to _die_, do

you? Well, when I saw her there, so worn and stricken, it came over me

what _that_ alternative would mean to us! When it comes to risking her

life, I give up. I’d give my own life to keep her from marrying this

idiot, but not hers! There’s only one thing for us to do, and we’ve got

to go through with it.”

“I can’t!”

“Yes, you can,” he told her, angrily. “And since we’ve got to do it

we’ll do it right. Not another word to her from either of us in

dispraise of her idiot. On the contrary! And he’s to be asked to dinner

to-morrow night, and as often as she wants him afterward. Blast him,

I’ll put him into my own office and try my darnedest to make it a job

that’ll interest him. They can be married as soon as he’s saved enough

to pay his own way. I’ll give her enough for hers. We’re beaten, Lydia.

There’s nothing else to do.”

She protested despairingly, and in continued despair finally surrendered

her “better judgment,” as she called it, to his weakness. Thus, after a

painful evening of argument, they went unhappily to their uneasy beds,

but woke in the morning determined to be thoroughbreds in the manner of

their acceptance of Oswald Crabbe Osborne as their daughter’s betrothed.

Their encounter with him, when he came to dinner that evening in this

recognized capacity, was an almost overwhelming trial of their gameness;

but they succeeded in presenting the semblance of a somewhat strained

beaming upon him, and were rewarded by the sight of a fading daughter

blossoming again.

For Lily was radiant: her eyes and cheeks glowed; her feet danced; she

was all light and love and gaiety. At the table she laughed at every

nothing, caressed her father, patted her mother’s cheek again and again,

and from her eyes poured sunshine upon her lover across the centrepiece

of roses.

Crabbe received the sunshine with complacency, for he was accustomed to

it; and although his position in regard to her father and mother was a

novelty, he appeared to accept their change of front as something he had

confidently expected all along. That is to say, he took it as a simple

and natural matter, of course, and was not surprised to be shown every

consideration by his former opponents.

In truth, they showed him more consideration than he was able to

perceive. As was already well known to them, he had not the equipment

for what is often spoken of as general conversation; his views upon

religious, political, scientific, or literary subjects were tactfully

not sought, because of his having omitted to acquire the information

sometimes held to be a necessary preliminary to the formation of

views;—in fact, as Lily’s parents were previously aware, he lacked even

those vagrant symptoms of ambition, the views without the information.

Therefore, Mr. and Mrs. Dodge kept the talk at first as weatherly, and

then as personal, as they could make it, hoping he might shine a little,

or at least that some faint spark might come from him to brighten their

own impressions of him. They wanted to force themselves to like him;

they had genuine yearnings to think better of him than had been their

habit; but although they strove within themselves to attain these ends,

they cannot be thought to have succeeded. The nearest Crabbe came to

giving them a spark was when he spoke of his father; and even that

apparent momentary gleam was not a happy one.

“He’s well,” Crabbe said, replying to Mrs. Dodge’s inquiry. “He’s

usually well enough. He takes pretty good care of his health and all. I

guess he’s a good deal surprised; but probably not enough to make him

sick.”

“Isn’t he?” Mr. Dodge said, and he laughed hopefully, for it seemed to

him that here was an unexpected hint of humour, something he had never

attributed to the young man. “What would surprise him as much as that?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” Crabbe replied. “But he told me once he always

got sick if anything surprised him too much. He says it injures his

digestion. What he’s surprised about now, it was when I told him about

Lily’s telephoning me this morning you were going to find me a position

that would interest me. He certainly said he was surprised.”

Mr. Dodge’s expectations collapsed, though his expression remained

indomitably genial. “I see,” he said. “Well, we’ll surprise him more by

showing him how well you get on at the work.”

“I know I will,” Crabbe returned, simply. “I mean I’m certain to if it

_is_ interesting. It’s just like I’ve been telling Lily: the only reason

I ever had any trouble at all in business, it’s because the luck’s been

all one way so far;—it kept against my getting anything to do that had

any possibilities in it. But it’ll be different from now on, I guess.

All anybody needs to do for me, Mr. Dodge, is to find me a position

where I’ll feel some use in getting my brain to work.”

Mr. Dodge said he was sure of it, gave his attention to his plate for a

few moments, and then, with the gallant assistance of his wife, returned

to the weather. Later, when they were alone together in the library,

where they could hear from the drawing-room the pretty sound of Lily’s

prattling, and, at brief intervals, her happy laughter, the parents

faced their misery.

“It’s unbelievable,” Mr. Dodge said, huskily. “You don’t run across

these extreme cases of self-satisfied asininity more than a few times in

your whole life, even counting all the hundreds and thousands of people

you come in contact with. And to think you’ve got to take such a case

into your _family_!”

“It’s your idea!” his wife reminded him.

“It isn’t! It’s not my idea; it’s a monstrous delusion that’s got hold

of our girl and that we failed to show her _is_ a delusion. Well, since

we couldn’t show her it is, and since opposing her in it was injuring

her health, what’s left for us to do but to act as if it were a reality?

It isn’t my idea to treat this moron as an angel and take him into our

family: it’s the dreadful necessity that her delusion has forced upon

us.”

“Thank you for not ending with, ‘Isn’t that logical?’” she said. “I’ve

been under such a strain, keeping my face cordial at the table, I don’t

believe I could have stood it!”

“Under a strain?” he echoed. “I should say so!” He gave her a

commiserating and comradelike pat upon her shoulder as he passed behind

her to get a book from the shelves. “We’ve both been under a strain,

Lydia, and I’m afraid we’ve got to go on being under it.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “That’s the prospect—for the rest of our lives!”

“I’m afraid so.” Then, with grave faces, they settled down to their

books, or, at least, tried to settle down to them, but looked into vague

and troubled distance more than they read;—ever and anon, as Lily’s

merriment was made ripplingly vocal in the drawing-room, the silence of

the library would become intensified and then be broken by a mother’s

sigh. But at ten o’clock the front door was heard to close with soft

reluctance; and Lily left upon the air a trail of dance music in slender

soprano as she skipped down the hall and into the library. She threw her

arms about her mother, then about her father, kissing them in turn.

“Now you’ve let yourselves begin to know him,” she cried, “isn’t he

wonderful? Isn’t he wonderful, Mamma? Isn’t he wonderful, Papa?”

The two thoroughbreds proved of what stuff heroism is made. They said

Crabbe was wonderful. . . . Upon an evening two weeks later, Mr. Dodge,

again alone with his wife in the library, reverted to this opinion. “I

think Crabbe Osborne is more than wonderful,” he said. “I think he’s

unique. I hate to be premature, but he’s been in my office for several

days now, and, though they don’t say it, I can see that everyone there

agrees with me. He couldn’t possibly have a duplicate.”

“Isn’t he ‘interested’ in anything you’ve offered him? Hasn’t he been

able to get his ‘brain’ to work?”

“Not yet,” Mr. Dodge replied. “He’s a little discouraged about it, I’m

afraid.”

“But you aren’t, are you?” She made this inquiry with a pointedness not

wasted upon him, for he had already perceived the indications that

thenceforth in their private hours, until death did them part, he was to

be the defender of their acceptance of Crabbe Osborne. Mrs. Dodge

adopted her husband’s policy, but could not relinquish her attitude of

having been forced to it.

“I’m not discouraged about my daughter’s health and spirits,” he

retorted, a little sharply. “I’m not discouraged about having done the

right thing. The ‘right thing’? How often do I have to tell you it was

the _only_ thing? Look what it’s done for Lily. She was literally pining

away. How many weeks was it that we never once saw her smile? How many

dozens and dozens of miserable, agonizing scenes did we have with her?

How long was it that every day was only another of weeping and

outcries—and untouched food on trays outside her door—and tears on

untouched food on the table when she did come to the dining-room? I tell

you, this house was nothing but a nightmare!”

“And how would you define most of our dinners during the last

fortnight?”

He winced, but continued to defend himself. “At least we’ve reduced the

nightmare. If our dinners with the moron are nightmares for us, they

aren’t for Lily. Only two of us suffer, where it was nightmare for all

three of us before. And it’s been easier for us this second week than it

was the first one.”

“Not for me,” his wife said, dismally. “The more I see of him the more

terrible it is to think of him as permanent.”

“But can’t you think only of Lily?”

“Indeed, I can! I’m doing just that!”

“Well, then,” he urged, “think of the difference in her these two weeks

have made. Now she’s interested in everything, happy in everything. How

many times did we try to get her to go to the country club dances and be

with the other young people of the kind she liked and enjoyed before

this spell came upon her? She said she ‘hated the horrible old place!’

because Crabbe Osborne couldn’t go there.”

“He didn’t mind that,” Mrs. Dodge remarked. “He went anyhow until they

sent him a note reminding him he wasn’t a member. That was why Lily said

she hated it and we couldn’t get her to go any more. I was surprised she

decided to go to-night, since she knows he can’t be there.”

“There’s the very point I’m making,” her husband said. “Two weeks ago

we’d both have thought it was the last thing in the world she’d consent

to do, and this evening we didn’t even suggest it to her; she went of

her own volition, and cheerfully, too! I ask you if that doesn’t show

she’s a different creature. And isn’t it better for two to suffer than

three?”

“I ask _you_,” she returned, sharply: “How short sighted are you? We’re

giving her a recess from pain, yes; but what are we thrusting her into?

When she does see him as he is, and finds herself bound to him for life,

isn’t she going to turn to us then, when it’s too late, and say: ‘Why

didn’t you save me?’”

“Oh, Lord!” the father groaned, and his gesture was that of a man who

has tried to make the best of his misery, but abandons the effort. “I

don’t know! I can’t see! When you put it like that, I don’t know whether

we’re doing right or wrong.” He paced the library floor, walking

heavily, his head down. “It’s a miserable thing any way you look at it,”

he said. “I did have just one slight alleviation: it seemed to me I bore

it a little better, having him at the dinner-table this week, than I did

the week before. It seemed to me maybe it might be because I was getting

to like him a little, perhaps.”

“No,” Mrs. Dodge said, grimly. “It was because he was here five times

the first week and only three the second.”

“Is that so?” He stopped his pacing and stood still. “So she asked him

five times the first week and only three the second. Doesn’t that look

as if maybe——”

“No, I’m afraid not,” his wife interrupted, unhesitatingly destroying

this obscure germ of hope. “When you give a child a toy it’ll play with

it more at first than it will later. That doesn’t mean the child won’t

cry if you try to take the toy away, does it?”

“No, I suppose not.” He had relapsed into gloom again. “And I suppose my

poor little alleviation was——”

“Your ‘alleviation,’” Mrs. Dodge informed him, “was in the diminished

number of the acute attacks—three instead of five—and not because you

began to feel any affection for the disease itself.”

“I’m afraid you’re right,” he said. “And I’m afraid you’ve found the

correct definition for what afflicts us.” He sank into a chair,

unhappily limp and relaxed, his arms hanging flaccidly over the arms of

the chair. “Crabbe Osborne is our disease,” he said. “It’s a disease the

more awful because when a child gets it the parents get it, too, and

when they give the child an opiate they only stop her pain for a little

while; and then the child and the parents, all three of ’em, have got to

have the disease for the rest of their lives! And the greatest mystery

of it all is that an absolutely chance boy, with no malice, no harm in

him—a mere drifting bit of flesh and nothing, that we’d never heard of

a year ago—that a meaningless thing like Crabbe Osborne should do all

this to us!”

“It isn’t,” she said. “He has nothing whatever to do with it. It’s

Lily’s imagination. Her imagination was in the state to get the disease,

and it just happened this boy was the nearest thing at a crucial moment.

It might as well have happened to be someone else.”

“If it _had_ only been any one else!” Mr. Dodge exclaimed. “I’m willing

to agree with you, though: Crabbe just happened to be the fatal microbe.

Well, he’s done for us, that’s sure!”

Mrs. Dodge glanced sidelong at him—she was making intermittent efforts

to read, and a table and a lamp were between them. “‘Done for us?’ Well,

you said there was no alternative, didn’t you? It’s your policy, isn’t

it?”

“I suppose so,” he groaned. “I suppose so, Lydia.” Then, shaking his

head ruefully, and with a grunt of desolate laughter in his throat, he

said: “I know, of course, that you’re going to lash me with it—my

‘policy’—for the rest of our lives!”

But this was a prediction unfulfilled, for they had missed a clew that

was in their hands; or, more accurately, it had been in their mouths,

and they had actually spoken it. A toy withheld becomes the universe to

a child, and a lover withheld is life and death; but toys and lovers

freely given are another matter. What Mr. and Mrs. Dodge failed to see

was the significant relation of five to three.

. . . The gloomy parents, despondently communing, were still in the

library at midnight when Lily came home. They heard her laughter outside

before the latchkey turned in the lock of the front door; and then, with

the opening of the door, her voice sounded in a gay chattering like a

run of staccato notes in an aria of spring. Accompanying it,

interrupting it, there was heard a ’cello obbligato, a masculine voice,

young and lively, and this short duet closed with Lily’s “See you

day-after-to-morrow!”

She came dancing into the library, all white fur and flying silk.

“Oh, you mustn’t!” she cried. “You dear things, you mustn’t sit up for

me!”

“We didn’t,” her mother said. “We were just reading. Who was it that

brought you home? I asked your Aunt Sarah——”

“Oh, no! Aunt Sarah was there, but I didn’t want to trouble her to come

out of her way.” Lily seated herself lightly on the arm of her mother’s

chair, letting one cheerful foot swing and resting an affectionate hand

upon Mrs. Dodge’s shoulder. “Freddie Haines brought me home. He’s a nice

boy.”

“Is he?”

“I like him awf’ly,” said Lily. “I danced with lots of others, though,

too. I didn’t want ’em to think I was only going to dance with nobody

but Fred.”

“Didn’t you?”

“Freddie Haines is considerate,” said Lily. “He doesn’t mind my being an

old engaged girl at all.” Upon this she looked across to meet her

father’s frowning glance, and laughed. “Oh, Fred won’t tell; he’s never

going to mention it. I didn’t forget I promised you to keep it under

cover until we’re ready to have it announced. I haven’t told any one but

Fred, and I’m not going to.” Here she jumped down from her mother’s

chair, took an apple daintily from a bowl on the table, and skipped to

the door, laughing reminiscently. “He didn’t take it seriously, anyhow!”

she said as she went out. Then, humming a dance tune, she ran upstairs

to her bed.

In the library the astounded parents gazed long upon each other, and the

longer they gazed the wider were their eyes.

“Well, at least there’s this much to be said for me,” Lily’s father

said, finally;—“when we decided to adopt my policy——”

“Your what?” cried Mrs. Dodge. “Your policy!”

He perceived that his policy was about to be claimed by another—not

instantly, nor brazenly, but nevertheless with a slowly growing

assurance that in time would browbeat him.

To-night his wife said, “Your _policy_!” The day would come when she

would say, “_Your_ policy?”

XI

MRS. CROMWELL’S YOUNGEST DAUGHTER

CORNELIA CROMWELL, having passed her sixteenth birthday anniversary, had

begun to think seriously about life and books, and was causing her

parents some anxiety. She declined a birthday party, although in former

years such festivals had obviously meant to her the topmost of her

heart’s desire; and she expressed her reasons for this refusal in a

baffling manner. “I simply don’t care to have one,” she said, coldly.

“Isn’t that enough?” Then, being further pressed, and informed that this

repeated explanation of hers was one of those not uncommon explanations

that do not explain, she said with visibly increasing annoyance:

“Frankly, it would be a useless expense, because I don’t care to have a

party.”

“She’s so queer lately,” her mother complained to Cornelia’s married

sister Mildred. “She won’t go to other girls’ parties either. Of course,

it isn’t desirable often, while she’s still in school, but there are a

few she really ought to go to, especially now, during the holidays. She

simply refuses—says she ‘doesn’t care to.’ It isn’t natural, and I

don’t know what to make of it, she’s grown so moody.”

“Don’t you think young girls nearly all get like that sometimes?”

Mildred suggested. “Perhaps somebody hurt her feelings at the last party

she did go to.” She laughed reminiscently. “I remember when I was about

her age I was terribly anxious to please that funny little Paul

Thompson, who used to live next door. He danced with me twice at

somebody’s birthday party, and I felt perfectly uplifted about it. Then

I overheard him talking to another boy, not thinking I was near him. He

said his mother had told him he must be polite to me or he wouldn’t have

done it, and he certainly never would again, no matter what his mother

said, because I’d walked all over his new pumps. It just crushed me, and

I know I moped around the house for days afterward; but I wouldn’t tell

you what was the matter. It’s the most terribly sensitive age we go

through, Mamma, and I just _couldn’t_ have told you. Perhaps there’s

been a Paul Thompson for Cornelia.”

“No,” Mrs. Cromwell returned. “I’m sure there isn’t, and that nobody’s

hurt her feelings. She came home from the last party she went to, a

couple of months ago, in a perfect gale of high spirits; she’d had a

glorious time. Then, a week or two later, when I spoke of arranging for

her birthday, she got very moody—wouldn’t hear of any such thing; and

she’s been so ever since. Your father’s getting cross about it and

thinks we ought to do something.”

“You don’t suppose—you don’t suppose she’s fallen in love? It does

happen, you know, Mamma—even at fifteen and sixteen.”

“No,” Mrs. Cromwell returned decidedly. “I’m certain it isn’t that.

She’s sensible about the boys she knows, and she’s never shown the

slightest sentimentality. I’ve thought over all those things, and it

isn’t any of them. Nothing’s the matter with her health either; so there

just isn’t any reason at all for a change in her. Yet she _has_

changed—completely. In the space of a few weeks—you might almost say a

few days—instead of being the bright, romping, responsive girl she’s

always been, she’s become so silent and remote you’d think the rest of

her family were mere distant and rather inferior acquaintances. It’s

mysterious and extremely uncomfortable. Your father thinks we ought to

send her away to school where she’d have a complete change, and I’ve had

some correspondence about it with Miss Remy of your old school. I think

perhaps——”

Mrs. Cromwell stopped speaking, her attention arrested by the sound of a

door opening and closing. She listened for a moment, then whispered:

“There! She’s just come in. See for yourself.”

The two ladies were sitting in a room that opened upon the broad central

hallway of the house, and their view of that part of the black-and-white

marble-floored hall just beyond the open double doors was unimpeded.

Here appeared in profile the subject of their discussion, a plump

brunette demoiselle, rosy-cheeked and far from uncomely, but weightily

preoccupied with her own thoughts.

She did not even glance into the room where sat her mother and sister,

though the doorway was so wide that she must have been conscious of

them;—she was going toward the stairway at the other end of the hall,

and would have passed without offering any greeting, if her mother’s

voice, a little strained, had not checked her.

“Cornelia!”

The girl paused unwillingly. “Yes?”

“Don’t you see who’s here?”

“Yes.” Cornelia nodded vaguely in the direction of her sister. “How do

you do,” she said, not smiling. “I’m glad to see you.”

“Is that all you have to say?” Mrs. Cromwell inquired.

“Yes, Mamma, if you please. May I go now? There’s something important I

want to attend to.”

“What is it?”

“Something important.”

“You told us that,” her mother returned. “What is it?”

Cornelia’s voice expressed the strained tolerance of a person who has

already reported, over and over, all the known facts in a case. “Mamma,

I explained that it’s something important. Would you mind letting me

go?”

“No! Do!” her mother replied crisply, and, when Cornelia had

disappeared, turned again to her oldest daughter, and with widespread

hands made the gesture of one displaying strange stuff for inspection.

“You see? That’s what she’s like all the time.”

“What do you suppose it is she says is so important?”

Mrs. Cromwell laughed ruefully. “That’s all you’d ever find out about it

from her. If I ask her again at lunch what it was, she’ll do just what

she did then. Her expression will show that she finds me a very trying

person, and she’ll either say, ‘Nothing,’ or else, ‘It was something I

wanted to attend to.’ And if we should follow her up to her room now, we

shouldn’t learn any more about it. She’d probably be just pottering at

her dressing-table or looking out of the window. That’s all we’d find

her doing.”

In this surmise Mrs. Cromwell was correct;—if she and Mildred had

ascended to Cornelia’s room, they would have found her either

rearranging the silver and porcelain trifles on her dressing-table, or

else standing at the window near her desk and looking down pensively

upon the suburban boulevard below. That is to say, by the time they

opened the door she would have been doing one of those two things:

Cornelia was quick of hearing.

What they would have found her doing, if they could have entered her

room without any forewarning sound of footsteps, however, was another

matter. While her mother and sister continued to wonder about her

downstairs, Cornelia went to her small desk of dull mahogany and seated

herself before it, but, having done that, did nothing else for a minute

or two;—instead, she sat listening, a precaution due to the possibility

that her mother might indeed prove so curious as to follow up recent

inquiries in person.

Then she opened the desk, and after a final glance at her closed door,

took from about her neck, beneath the collar of her brown silk blouse, a

tiny key upon a fragile gold chain of links as slim as thin wire. With

the key she unlocked a drawer inside the desk, and as she did this her

expression altered;—the guarded look vanished, and there came in its

place a tenderness, wistful and yet so keen that the colour in her

cheeks heightened and her softened eyes grew lustrous.

She took first from the drawer a little notebook bound in black leather,

and opened it. All the pages were blank except the first one, upon which

she had lately written the opening sentence of a novel that she intended

to offer the world when the work had been secretly completed. She read

the sentence over fondly and yet with some perplexity. It was this:

Gregory Harlford had just fallen out of his airplane at a height

of 7000 feet and as he possessed no parachute he realized that

only a miracle could save him from being dashed to pieces at the

end of his descent.

That was the original form of the sentence, but Cornelia had made an

alteration. She had scratched out “7000” and replaced it with “5000.”

To-day she looked at the latter figure thoughtfully for some time, and,

having drawn a line through it, wrote “1000” above it. Then, for a few

moments, she had an encouraged look and seemed about to begin a second

sentence, but did not do so. Instead, she rested her elbow upon the desk

and her chin upon her hand; and as she continued her study of the

opening of her novel, her air of being encouraged gave way to a renewed

bafflement. It was not that the opening sentence displeased her;—on the

contrary. Yet whenever she wished to add another and get on with the

story, she came to one of those inexplicable blank gaps in the creative

mind, one of those flat stops that so often set even the most willing

novelists to walking the floor or the links.

She was sure that if she could once surmount the difficulty of the

second sentence, the rest would flow easily from her. Gregory Harlford

was to be the hero of her story, and she had in her mind’s eye a

remarkably definite portrait of him, which she wished to include in the

novel; but she felt that under the circumstances a description of his

person and attributes would be out of place in the second sentence.

There was a vague but persistent impediment somewhere;—inspiration

failed to make an appearance, and, after waiting almost fifteen minutes

for it, she sighed, pushed the little book away and turned to the other

contents of the drawer.

There were several queer items: the stub of an almost entirely consumed

lead pencil; an odd bit of broken amber, not quite cylindrical, and half

of an old shoe-lace. There were also a dozen dried violets, a flattened

rosebud, and a packet of small sheets of note paper whereon appeared

cryptic designs—line drawings most curious. These enigmas were what now

occupied Cornelia.

[Illustration: ABSOLUTELY PERFECT]

They were her own handiwork; nobody had even seen any of them, and they

were of different ages. The oldest of the designs had been drawn long,

long ago;—that is to say, long, long ago, according to Cornelia’s sense

of the passage of time. For she was sixteen now, and she had made the

first of the queer drawings four eternal years earlier, when she was

only a child.

It appeared to be the representation in profile of a steep stairway, or

perhaps a series of superimposed cliffs, each with a small shelf at its

base. Beginning at the bottom of the sheet of paper, this stairway, or

series of cliffs, rose to a small plateau or summit near the top; and

upon each step, or shelf of cliff, there was drawn one of those little

figures children call “men”;—the body is emaciated to the extent that

it becomes a single straight line, the arms and legs being similar

lines, and the head a round black dot.

In Cornelia’s drawing, each of these little figures was labelled, a name

having been written beside it; and in some cases a descriptive word or

two had been added beneath the name. Thus, under the name “Georgie P.”,

which evidently belonged to the figure occupying the lowest step or

shelf, there appeared in faded purple ink a phrase of qualified

admiration, “Half Handsome.” Another expression of an enthusiasm limited

by a defect in its subject seemed to refer to “Harold,” midway in the

ascent—“Terribly Good Looking But Stingy.” However, the figure upon the

summit, named in full, “William Peterson McAvoy,” was obviously the

symbol of a being without flaw, for here Cornelia had carefully printed,

all in capital letters: “ABSOLUTELY PERFECT.”

[Illustration: Too Snooty.]

Yet, in the next drawing, which, like all the others, was of the same

stairway, or series of cliffs, with little “men” upon the steps or

ledges, a sharp disaster had befallen this figure adorning with its

perfection the summit of the first design. Cornelia had drawn a straight

line from the summit down to the bottom of the page; and evidently this

straight line indicated a precipice of catastrophical dimension. At the

foot of it lay the dot and five lines representing the head, body, and

members of William Peterson McAvoy, again thus denominated, and near by

was written the simple explanation, “Too Snooty.” The summit was bare.

In a subsequent design, done when Cornelia was thirteen, the half

handsome Georgie P., who had sometimes occupied one step and sometimes

another, finally made his appearance upon the summit, though without any

other explanatory tribute than a date: “Sept. 16th.” But Georgie P. did

not long remain in his high position. A drawing made only a week later

depicted him miserably upon his back at the foot of the precipice, and

beside him Cornelia had written: “Perfectly Odious. Well only another

dream shattered.”

All of the drawings were dated and thus proved that they were made at

irregular intervals;—sometimes two or three months had elapsed between

them; sometimes three or four would be produced within a week; and the

figures upon the steps or ledges varied in name and relative position as

greatly, though one or two of the names appeared upon all of the designs

except the last and most recent one. This had been drawn only a month

ago, and was interestingly different from its predecessors.

One thing that made it different was the fact that it contained a

Mister. In the others there were Georgies and Harolds and Williams and

Toms and Johnnies; but now, for the first time, with unique dignity,

appeared “Mr. Bromley,” neither a Mister nor a Bromley having been seen

upon any previous step or ledge. Moreover, this début of his was

unprecedented. Instead of occupying one ledge and then another,

sometimes ascending, sometimes descending, before reaching the final

elevation, Mr. Bromley made his first appearance strikingly upon the

summit. More than this, the ledges below him were unoccupied;—the lofty

plateau alone was inhabited. The Harolds and Johnnies and Georgies were

gone utterly from the picture, as if unworthy to be seen at all upon a

mountain crowned with this supreme Mister.

[Illustration: Mr. Bromley.]

For the cliffs, or stairway, meant a mountain to Cornelia;—she thought

of the drawings as a mountain; and she called the little packet, kept in

the locked drawer, “My Mountain.” Her mountain was her own picture of

her heart and of the impressions made upon it;—no wonder she kept it

locked away! And now it was a deeper secret than ever, for in its

present state it glorified the one name alone, and would have told her

world everything. Mr. Bromley was the “English Professor,” aged

forty-three, at the boarding-school where she was a day scholar; and not

long ago he had told her she ought to think “less about candy and more

about books and life.” That was what was the matter with Cornelia;—she

had begun her novel immediately, and spent a great deal of time in her

room, thinking about life and Mr. Bromley.

Mr. Bromley was the hero of the novel and Cornelia thought of him as

Gregory Harlford. The general public would never have supposed Mr.

Bromley to be an aviator, and he had no claim, in fact, to be thought

anything so dashing, though he was fond of chess and still played tennis

sometimes. Nevertheless, he seemed to be a quietly resourceful man, one

who would find a way out of almost any difficulty, and it was strange

that he remained so long suspended in mid-air, in Cornelia’s story, even

after the vacancy beneath him had been reduced to a thousand feet. For,

after looking over her mountain, Cornelia again took up the little

leather-bound notebook and renewed the struggle for a second sentence.

Nothing resulted, and, sighing, she gave over the effort and performed a

little daily ceremonial of hers, placing side by side in a row her

mementoes of Mr. Bromley—the stub of the pencil he had used, the worn

shoe-lace he had broken and carelessly tossed aside, the rosebud she had

once asked him to smell, the violets that had dropped from his coat

lapel, and the fragment of the amber mouthpiece of his pipe, broken when

it fell from his pocket upon the stone steps of the school building.

Dreamily, she put them all in a row, touching them gently, one after the

other; then she leaned her elbows upon the desk and, with her chin in

her hands, thought about life and books in a general way for several

minutes.

After that, as the air was warm in the room, she went to the window and

opened it. Looking down moodily, she saw her sister Mildred departing.

“Going home to mess around with the baby,” Cornelia thought. “That’s her

life. How strange she can be contented with it!”

A large red open car went by, sending forth upon the wintry air some

cheerful cadences of song as it passed;—young gentlemen collegians

merrymaking not indecorously in this holiday time. Cornelia looked down

upon the manly young faces, rosy with the wind. “How terrible!” she

murmured, dreamily. For they were no part of her mountain; her sister’s

baby had nothing to do with Mr. Bromley; neither had the song from the

big red car; both were dross.

A negro rattled by upon an ash cart drawn by a lively mule. The negro

whistled piercingly to a friend in the distance, and the mule’s splendid

ears stood high and eager; he was noble in action, worthy of all

attention. Cornelia could not bear him. “Oh, dear!” she said, probably

thinking of his master, who was proud of him. “What lives these people

lead!”

She was in the act of turning away from this barren window when

something far down the street caught her attention. It was the figure of

a thin, somewhat middle-aged gentleman in gray clothes, approaching

slowly upon the sidewalk. For a moment Cornelia was uncertain; then

there appeared for an instant, beneath the rim of his soft hat, twin

sparklings of reflected light. They vanished, but Cornelia needed no

further proof that the gentleman in gray wore the eyeglasses that

completed her identification of him.

She said, “_Oh!_” in a loud voice, and clapped her joined hands over her

mouth to stifle this too-eloquent revelation. Then the bright eyes above

the joined hands semicircled impulsively to the bed, where lay her hat

and coat as she had tossed them when she came into the room. The impulse

that made her look at them increased overwhelmingly; she seized them,

put them on hurriedly; opened her door with elaborate caution, tiptoed

to a back stairway, descended it noiselessly, and a moment later left

the house by a rear door. No one had seen her except the cook’s cat.

XII

HER HAPPIEST HOUR

THUS Cornelia saved herself from replying to intrusive questions about

where she was going, and why; but in her impulsive haste she had

forgotten something. Upon her desk, upstairs, lay her heart’s secret,

her mountain, all in loose sheets of paper. Beside the desk was an open

window;—she had left the door open, too, and this was a breezy day.

Such was instantly her condition at sight of Mr. Bromley; and with no

thought but to have more sight of him, she flitted across the back yard

and through an alley gate, leaving calamity brooding behind her.

Mr. Bromley, returning homeward with a book under his arm, after his

morning’s browsing in the suburban public library, was not surprised to

see one of his pupils emerge from a cross-street before him, since this

was the neighbourhood in which most of the school’s day scholars lived;

but he wondered why Cornelia Cromwell was so deeply preoccupied. She

seemed to look toward him, though vaguely, and he lifted his hand to his

hat; but before he could complete his salutation she looked away,

apparently unconscious of him. She was walking in a rather elderly

manner, with her head inclined forward and her hands meditatively

clasped behind her—the right posture for an engrossed statesman

philosopher, but not frequently expected of sixteen. At the corner she

turned northward upon the boulevard sidewalk, Mr. Bromley’s own

direction, and went pensively on before him, some thirty yards or so in

advance.

His gait was slow, for that was his thoughtful habit; and the distance

between them, like Cornelia’s attitude, remained unvaried until the next

cross-street was reached. Here, without altering that scholarly attitude

of hers by a hair’s-breadth, she walked straight into what was the

proper path and right-of-way demanded by an oncoming uproarious taxicab.

With his hoarse warning signal and with his own hoarse voice, the driver

raved; she heeded him not. So, taking his life in his hands, he saved

her by charging into the curbstone. The wheels providentially mounted

and bore him fairly upon the sidewalk;—he crashed down again to the

pavement of the boulevard and roared onward, biblically oratorical about

women, let hear him who would.

Mr. Bromley rushed forward and seized Cornelia’s arm. “Miss Cromwell!”

She looked up, smiling absently. “Do you think there was any danger?”

she asked. “I didn’t notice.”

“Good gracious!” he cried. “Don’t you know you can’t cross streets

_any_where, these days, without looking to see what’s coming? What was

the matter with you?”

“The matter?” she repeated, vaguely, as she began to walk onward with

him. “Why, nothing.”

“I mean: What on earth were you thinking of to step right in front of

a——”

“Oh, that? Yes,” she said, gently. “I see what you mean now, Mr.

Bromley. I was thinking about life.”

“You were, indeed?”

“And books,” she added.

“Well, I wouldn’t!” he said, for he had long since forgotten his advice

to her in the matter. “If I were you, I’d put my mind more upon street

crossings, especially during pedestrian excursions.”

She accepted the reproof meekly, not replying, and for some moments

walked beside him in silence. Then she said gravely: “I believe I

haven’t thanked you for saving my life.”

“What?”

She repeated it: “I haven’t thanked you for saving my life.”

“Good gracious!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t do anything of the kind.”

“You did, Mr. Bromley.”

“I certainly did not,” he said, astonished that she seemed genuinely to

believe such a thing. “The taxicab was banging around all over the

sidewalk by the time I reached you.”

“No,” she insisted. “I heard you call my name, and then you took hold of

me. If you hadn’t, I’d have gone straight on.”

“Well, you’d have been all right to go straight on, because by that time

the taxicab was twenty or thirty feet away.”

“No, I’d have been killed,” she said. “If you hadn’t caught me, I’d have

been killed absolutely.”

He stared at her, perplexed, though he knew that people often retain but

a confused recollection of exciting moments, even immediately after

those moments have passed. Then, with this thought in his mind, he was a

little surprised to find that she simultaneously had it in her mind,

too.

“Maybe you were a little excited to see a person in danger,” she said.

“It might have got you mixed up or something. When things happen so

quickly, it’s hard to remember exactly what _did_ happen. You may not

know it, but you saved my life, Mr. Bromley.”

He laughed. “I didn’t; but if you insist on thinking so, I suppose

there’s no harm.”

This seemed to content her; she nodded her head, smiled sunnily, then

became grave again. “And to think you’d risk your own life to save—even

mine!” she murmured.

“That’s merely absurd, Miss Cromwell. By not the remotest possibility

could it be conceived that I placed myself in any jeopardy whatever.”

“Well”——she returned, indefinitely, but seemed to reserve the right to

maintain her own conviction in the matter. “I think ‘jeopardy’ is a

beautiful word, Mr. Bromley,” she added, after a moment’s silence. “I

mean, whether you admit you were in jeopardy or not, it’s a word I think

ought to be used oftener because it’s got such a distinguished kind of

sound.” She repeated it softly, to herself. “Jeopardy.” Then, in a

somewhat louder voice, but as if merely offering a sample sentence in

which this excellent word appeared to literary advantage, she murmured:

“He placed his life in jeopardy—for me.”

“I didn’t!” her companion said, sharply. “The word is extremely

inappropriate in any such connection.”

“I just used it to see how it would sound,” Cornelia explained. “I mean,

whether you did get in jeopardy or anything, or not, on my account, Mr.

Bromley, I was just seeing how it would sound if I said it. I mean, like

this.” And she began to repeat, “He placed his life in jeopardy——”

“Please oblige me,” Mr. Bromley interrupted. “Don’t say it again.”

His tone was brusque, and she looked up inquiringly to find him frowning

with annoyance. She decided to change the subject.

“Do you care much for Christmas, Mr. Bromley?” she asked, in the key of

polite small talk. “It strikes me as terribly tiresome, myself. I’m

positively looking forward to the next school term.”

“Are you?”

“Yes—and oh! there was something I thought of the other day I wanted to

ask you. Are you a Republican or a Democrat, Mr. Bromley?”

“Neither.”

“That’s so much more distinguished,” Cornelia said. “I mean it seems so

much more distinguished not to be in politics. Do you believe in woman

suffrage?”

“No.”

“Neither do I,” she said, and made a serious decision instantly. “I’m

never going to vote, myself. The more I think about books and life, Mr.

Bromley, the less I care about—about”—she hesitated, having begun the

sentence without foreseeing its conclusion—“well, about things in

general and everything,” she finally added.

The gentleman beside her looked puzzled; but Cornelia was unaware of the

sweeping vagueness of her remark. She was not in a condition to take

note of such details, her consciousness being too preoccupied with the

fact that she was walking with him who dwelt upon the summit of her

mountain—walking with him and maintaining a conversation with him upon

an intellectual footing, so to speak. And as she felt that a special

elegance was demanded by the occasion, she made her voice a little

artificial and obliterated our alphabet’s least fashionable consonant

from her enunciation entirely.

She waved a pretty little ungloved hand in a gesture of airy languor.

“Most things seem such a baw, don’t you think?” she said.

“Bore?” he inquired, correctly interpreting her effort. “They certainly

shouldn’t seem so to you, at your age.”

“My _age_?” she echoed, and gave forth an affected little scream. “Don’t

talk to me about my _age_! Why, half the time I feel I’m at least a

hundred.”

Her companion’s reception of the information was somewhat dry. “Not much

_more_, I trust,” he said, and looked hopefully forward into the

distance as if to some goal or terminus of this excursion.

But Cornelia’s exaltation was too high for her to be aware of any slight

appearances that might lower it. “Indeed I do,” she insisted. “Why, when

I look at the classes of younger girls that have come into the school in

the years and years I’ve been there, I feel a thousand. I do,

positively, I do assure you.”

From beneath a plaintive brow, Mr. Bromley’s eyes continued to search

the distance hopefully, and he made no response.

Then, as he still remained silent, Cornelia did what most people do when

their ebulliences are received without encouraging comment—she eased

herself by a series of repetitions, enthusiastic at first, but tapering

in emphasis until she had settled down again into the casual. “It’s the

positive fact; these younger girls _do_ make me feel a

thousand—positively, I do assure you! You mayn’t believe it, but it’s

the mere simple truth, I do assure you. It is, I do——” She checked

herself, being about to say “I do assure you” again; and although her

own ability to use the phrase charmed her, she feared that too much of

it might appear to indicate a lack of versatility. She coughed

delicately, as a proper bit of punctuation for the unfinished

sentence;—then, as further punctuation, uttered sounds resembling a

courteous kind of laughter, to signify amusement caused by her own

remarks, and thus gradually reached a point where she could regard the

episode as closed.

Having successfully passed this rather difficult point, she looked up at

him with the air of a person suddenly overtaken by a belated thought

that should have arrived earlier. “Oh, by the by,” she said, “I suppose

I ought to’ve asked this sooner, but I expect I forgot it because I was

a little excited about your risking your li——”

“I did nothing of the kind,” he interrupted, promptly and sharply. “What

is it you wanted to ask me?”

“Well, it was this, Mr. Bromley. We got to walking along together after

you saved—after I nearly got run over—and I didn’t even ask you where

you’re going.”

“I’m on my way to lunch at the Blue Tea Room.”

“You—you _are_?” Cornelia said in a strange tone. An impulse, rash and

sudden, had affected her throat.

She had never before been quite alone with the solitary inhabitant of

her mountain’s summit; she had never before walked with him. Her walking

was upon air, moreover. She was self-conscious, yet had no consciousness

of walking—the rather, she floated in the crystal air of great

altitudes; and, rapt in the transcendent presence beside her, she became

intoxicated by the experience.

Cornelia had fallen in love with Mr. Bromley sublimely, instantly, upon

that day when he told her to think about books and life;—there seemed

to be no other reason, though her own explanation defined him as the

only man who had ever spoken to her inner self—and now that she found

herself alone with him for the first time, she could not bear for that

time to be brief. She was already expected at home for lunch, and she

knew that her unexplained absence might cause more than mere comment in

her domestic circle. Her impulse was, therefore, something more than

indiscreet, taking all circumstances and the strictness of her mother

into account. But the exciting moment had prevailed with Cornelia before

she took anything into account.

“To lunch at the Blue Tea Room?” she cried. “Why, Mr. Bromley, so am I!

That’s just where I was going. Isn’t that _queer_? Why, we can have

lunch together.”

The hopeful gleam passed out of Mr. Bromley’s expression, though perhaps

the bright eyes looking up at him so eagerly were able to interpret his

gloom as merely the thoughtfulness habitual to a scholar. His was not a

practical mind; he had no thought that Cornelia’s lunching with him

might have any result save to spoil the cozy hour he had planned for

himself with his book as a table companion. To him she was one of the

hundred pupils at the school—a little girl who had lately developed odd

mannerisms and airy affectations, for no reason except that many little

girls seemed to pass through such phases—and so far as his interest in

her as an individual human being was concerned, Cornelia might as well

have been eight years old as sixteen. He saw nothing, except that he

would have to listen to her instead of reading his book, for, since she

meant to lunch at the Blue Tea Room, she would probably talk to him

anyhow, whether they sat at the same table or not.

“Ah—if such be the case, very well,” he said, without enthusiasm. “Very

well, Miss Cromwell.” Then he added hastily, “I mean to say”—and paused

hoping to think of something that might avoid the proposed tête-à-tête;

but he failed. “I mean to say—ah—if you wish, Miss Cromwell.”

“_Do_ I!” she exclaimed, breathlessly; but the radiant face she showed

him only gave him the idea that she was probably excited by the prospect

of waffles.

Yet, when waffles—the Blue Tea Room’s specialty—were placed, as a

second course, upon the small blue-and-white painted table between her

and Mr. Bromley, Cornelia showed no avidity for them. She had resumed

her elegant manner, and but toyed with the food. Her elegance, indeed,

was almost oppressive to her companion;—she told the blue-aproned

waitress, whose cultivation was betokened by horn-rimmed spectacles,

that forgetting to bring butter was a “dreadful baw.” She said “baw” as

frequently as she could, in fact; and she appeared to view the people at

the other tables through a frigid though invisible lorgnette.

Her disdain of them as plebeians, beings unknown and not to be known,

was visible in her expression;—so much so that it made Mr. Bromley

uncomfortable; and here was a small miracle in its way; for in reality

she did not see the other people in the room at all distinctly. They

were only blurred planes of far-away colour to her; she was but dimly

aware of their outlines, and failed to recognize two of them whom she

knew very well.

For Cornelia all life and light centred upon the little painted table at

which she sat with Mr. Bromley. The world to her was like a shadowy room

at sunset, when through a window a last shaft from the rosy sun

illumines one spot alone, making it glorious, and all else dim and

formless. Mr. Bromley and she sat together in this golden glow, an aura

that shimmered out to nothing all round about them, so that there was no

definite background; and for anything more than two or three feet away

she was astigmatic.

Elation sweet as music possessed her. She was not only lunching at a

restaurant with a Distinguished Man, quite as if she were a prima donna

in Paris, but that Distinguished Man was Mr. Bromley—Mr. Bromley

himself, pale with studious wisdom, yet manly, and incomparably more

exciting than the symbol of him drawn with five lines and a dot upon her

mountain. She had sometimes trembled when she looked at that emaciated

symbol: What wonder could there be that she became a little too elegant,

that her laughter rang a little too loudly, or that she showed herself

disdainful of lowly presences in a dim background, now, when she sat

facing her Ideal made actual in all his beauty?

Beauty it was, in good faith, to Cornelia, and, so far as she was

concerned, Praxiteles, experimenting to improve Mr. Bromley, could only

have marred him. There was gray in his hair, but it was not emphasized,

since he was an ashen blond; and for Cornelia—unaware of his actual

years and content to remain so—he had no age, he had only perfection.

So beautiful he was in the rosy light with which she encircled him.

“Aren’t you going to eat your waffles, now you’ve got ’em?” he asked, a

little querulously.

“Waffles?” she said, as if she knew of none and the word were strange to

her. “Waffles?”

“Aren’t you going to eat them? I supposed that was why you came here.”

She looked down at her plate, appeared surprised to find it occupied,

and uttered a courtesy laughter with such grace it seemed almost that

she sang the diatonic scale. This effect was so pronounced, indeed, that

several people at other tables turned—again—to look at her, and Mr.

Bromley reddened. “Oh, yes,” she said. “You mean these waffles. Yes,

indeed!” And here she repeated her too musical laughter, accompanying it

with several excited gestures of amazement as she exclaimed, “_Imagine_

my not noticing them when they’re absolutely my favourite food!

Absolutely they are, my dear man, I do assure you!”

Then, having touched a waffle with her fork, she set the fork down,

placed her elbows on the table, rested her chin in her hands and gazed

upon her companion lustrously. “Mr. Bromley,” she said, “how did your

father and mother happen to choose ‘Gregory’ for your first name? Were

you named for somebody else, or did they just have kind of an

inspiration to call you Gregory.”

“I was named for an uncle,” he replied briefly.

“How beautiful!” she murmured.

“What?”

“It’s a beautiful name,” she said, and, not changing her attitude,

continued to gaze upon him.

“Why in the world don’t you eat your food?” he asked, impatiently. He

had become but too well aware that Cornelia was attracting a covertly

derisive attention; and he began to think her a bothersomely eccentric

child. Following her noticeable elegance and her diatonic laughter, her

dreamy attitude in the presence of untouched waffles was conspicuous,

and he was annoyed in particular by the interest with which two

occupants of a table against the opposite wall were regarding him and

Cornelia.

One of these interested persons was another of his pupils, a girl of

Cornelia’s age. He could not fail to note how frequently she glanced at

him, and after each glance whispered seriously with her mother across

their table; then both would stare surreptitiously at him and his rapt

vis-à-vis. There was something like a disapproving surveillance—even

something inimical—in their continuing observation, he thought; nor was

he remote from the truth in this impression.

Cornelia’s schoolmate was enjoying herself, excited by what she had

easily prevailed upon a nervous mother to see as a significant

contretemps. Moreover, the daughter had just imparted to the mother a

secret known to half the school, but not to Mrs. Cromwell.

“Crazy about him!” the schoolmate whispered. “Absolutely! She picked up

the stub of his pencil and kept it, and a piece of an old broken pipe.

We teased her, and she got red and ran away. She won’t speak to us for

days if we say anything about him she doesn’t like. Everybody knows

she’s simply frantic. Did you ever see such airs as she’s been putting

on, and did you hear her calling him her ‘dear man’ and talking about ‘I

do assure you’? And then looking at him like _that_—the poor smack!”

“I never in all my life saw anything like it!” the mother returned, her

brow dark and her eyes wide. “She looked straight at us and never made

the slightest sign when we bowed to her! The idea of as careful a woman

as Mrs. Cromwell allowing her daughter to get into such a state, in the

first place, is very shocking to me; and in the second, to permit her to

come here, at her age, and lunch in public with a man she’s in such a

state _about_—a man supposed to be her teacher and old enough to be

almost her grandfather—I simply can’t imagine what she means by it.”

The schoolmate giggled. “Cornelia’s mother? Don’t you believe it. Mrs.

Cromwell doesn’t know a thing about it.”

“Then she _ought_ to know, and immediately. If one of my daughters

behaved like that, I should certainly be thankful to any one who

informed me of it. I certainly——”

“_Look!_” the schoolmate whispered, profoundly stirred. “Look at her

_now_!”

Cornelia was worth the look thus advised. Under repeated pressure to

dispose of her waffles, she had made some progress with them, but now

with the plate removed and a cooling sherbet substituted before her, she

had resumed her rapt posture, her elbows upon the table, her chin upon

her hands, her wistful bright eyes fixed upon the face of the

uncomfortable gentleman opposite her.

“Was your uncle a very distinguished man, Mr. Bromley?” she asked. “I

mean the one they named you ‘Gregory’ after.”

“Not in any way,” he said. He had finished his own lunch, and moved back

slightly but significantly in his chair. “Hadn’t you better eat your

sherbet?” he suggested. “I believe it’s about time for me to go.”

She sighed, lowered her eyes, and obediently ate the sherbet; but ate it

so slowly that by the time she had finished it they were alone in the

room except for a waitress, who made her own lingering conspicuous.

“Now, then,” Mr. Bromley said, briskly, “if you’ve quite concluded

your——”

“But I haven’t had any coffee,” Cornelia interrupted. “I always have a

small cup after lunch.”

“Does your mother——”

“Mamma?” she said, appearing greatly surprised. “Oh, dear, yes. She

takes it herself.”

He resigned himself, and the waitress brought the little cup; but as

Cornelia conveyed the contents to her lips entirely by means of the

accompanying tiny spoon, and her care not to be injured by hot liquid

was extreme, he thought that never in his life had he seen any person

drink an after-dinner cup of coffee so slowly. And, all the while,

Cornelia, silent, seemed to be dreamily yet completely engrossed with

this long process of consumption; her lowered eyes were always upon the

tiny spoon. The impatient Mr. Bromley sat and sat, and finally lost his

manners so far as to begin a nervous tapping upon the rugless floor with

the sole of his right shoe.

This was the oddest child in the world, he thought. A little while ago

she had looked at him with so intent a curious dreaminess that she had

annoyed him; now she seemed to have forgotten him in her epicurean

absorption in half a gill of coffee. And so he frowned, and shifted in

his chair and tapped the floor with his shoe, and did not know that the

tapping had grown rhythmical. For, though her eyes were lowered and her

lips were silent, Cornelia was keeping time to it with a song. Each tap

of Mr. Bromley’s foot was a syllable of the song.

The hours I spent with thee, dear heart,

Are as a string of pearls to me;

I count them over, every one apart——

. . . But at last her pearls were gone; the little cup was empty. “Now,”

he said, “if you’ve finished, Miss Cromwell——” And he pushed back his

chair decisively, rising as he did so.

Still she sat and did not look up, but with her eyes upon the empty cup,

she asked: “Would you let this be my lunch, Mr. Bromley? Would you mind

if I charged it to Papa?”

“Nonsense,” he said. He had already paid the waitress. “Ah—if you

intend remaining here——”

“No, I’m coming,” she said, meekly. “I just——” She rose, and as she

did she looked up at him radiantly, facing him. “You—you’ve been ever

so nice to me, Mr. Bromley.”

Her cheeks were glowing, her lifted happy eyes were all too worshipfully

eloquent; and for a moment, as the two stood there, Mr. Bromley felt a

strange little embarrassment, this time not an annoyed embarrassment.

Who can know what is in a young girl’s heart? Suddenly, to his own

surprise, he felt a slight, inexplicable emotion;—something in

Cornelia’s look pleased him and even touched him. Just for the five or

six seconds that he knew this feeling, something mysterious, something

charming, seemed about to happen.

“No,” he said. “It’s you who were nice to me. I—I’ve enjoyed

it—truly.”

She drew a deep breath. “Have you _really_?” she cried. And with that,

she turned and ran to the door, all sixteen. But, with the door open,

she called back to him over her shoulder, “I’m glad it’s Friday, Mr.

Bromley.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s only till Monday when school begins!”

XIII

HEARTBREAK

SHE RAN out of the door and to the street, where she turned northward,

away from home, with her cheeks afire and her heart still singing; but

what it sang now was, “Monday! Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,

Friday—Monday again!” All through the year she would see him on every

one of those days. Cornelia was happy.

She was altogether happy; and she had just spent the happiest hour of

her life. Other happy hours she might know, and many different kinds of

happiness, but never again an hour of such untouched happiness as this.

Happiness unshadowed cannot come often after childhood, and sixteen is

one of the years that close childhood.

She was too happy to be with any one except herself; she could not talk

to any one except herself; and so her feet bore her lightly to the open

country outside the suburban town, and here, pleased with the bracing

winter wind upon her face, she walked and walked—and her walking was

more like dancing. She did not come home until the twilight of the short

day had begun to verge into dusk; and, when she entered the house she

went quickly up to her own room without seeing anybody on the way. In

her heart she was singing gaily, “Monday! Monday, Tuesday,

Wednesday——”

But as she pressed the light on at a lamp upon her dressing-table,

something disquieted her. She flew to her open desk, and, breathless,

clasped both hands about her throat, for before her was her sacred

mountain, but not as she had left it. The little papers had blown about

the room. Someone had closed the window, and gathered the drawings

together. Someone had left a paperweight upon them. Someone had seen the

mountain.

The door opened behind her, as Cornelia stood staring at this violation,

and she turned to face her mother.

Mrs. Cromwell closed the door, but she did not sit down or even advance

farther into the room. “Cornelia, where have you been all day?”

“What? Nowhere in particular.”

“Where did you lunch?”

“What? Nowhere in particular.”

“Cornelia!”

“Yes, Mamma.” Cornelia had resumed her armour; her look was moody and

her tone fatigued.

“Cornelia, I am asking you where you lunched.”

“I said, ‘Nowhere in particular,’ Mamma.”

“I know you did.” And upon this Mrs. Cromwell’s voice trembled a little.

“I wish you to tell me the truth, Cornelia.”

Cornelia stood before her, apparently imperturbable, with passive eyes

evasive; and Mrs. Cromwell, not knowing that her daughter’s knees were

trembling, began to speak with the severity she felt.

“Cornelia, your father and I have been talking in the library, and we’ve

made up our minds this sort of thing must come to a stop.”

“What sort of thing?”

“This rudeness of yours, this moodiness and secretiveness.”

“I’m not secretive.”

“You are. You’re an entirely changed girl. Last year you’d no more have

done what you’re doing now than you’d have flown!”

“What am I doing now?”

“You’re standing there trying to deceive me,” Mrs. Cromwell answered

sharply. “But I’m not deceived any longer, Cornelia; I’ve learned the

truth. We knew that a change had come over you, and you were moody and

indifferent toward your family, but we did at least suppose your mind

was on your books. But to-day——”

“To-day!” Cornelia cried out suddenly, her look of moodiness all gone.

She pointed to her desk. “Were _you_ in here to-day after I went out?

Did you——”

“You left your door open and your window, and those sheets of paper were

blowing clear out into the hall. Naturally, I——”

“Mamma!” Cornelia’s voice was loud now, and her finger trembled

violently as she pointed to the mountain. “Mamma, did you—did you——”

Mrs. Cromwell laughed impatiently. “Naturally, as I picked them up I

couldn’t very well help seeing what they were and drawing certain

conclusions.”

“You _dared_!” Cornelia cried, fiercely. “Mamma, you _dared_!”

“Cornelia, you will please not speak to me in that tone. I’m very glad

it happened because, though of course I shouldn’t take those little

drawings of yours seriously, and they’re of no significance worth

mentioning, there was one of them that did shed a light on something I

heard later in the afternoon.”

“What? What did you hear?”

Mrs. Cromwell came a step nearer her, gravely. “Cornelia, you needn’t

have tried to deceive me about where you went when you slipped out of

the house before lunch and caused me so much anxiety. I telephoned and

telephoned——”

Cornelia interrupted; her shaking finger still pointed to the desk: “I

don’t care to hear this. What I want to know is how you dared—how you

_dared_ to——”

“Cornelia, you must not ask your mother how she ‘dares’ to do anything.

We know where you lunched, and you might have guessed that you couldn’t

do such a thing without our hearing of it. A lady who saw you came

straight here to know if it was by my consent, and I’m very grateful to

her for it. In conjunction with the drawing I’d just seen, which

surprised me greatly, to say the least, what this lady told me was a

shock to me, as it is to your father, too, Cornelia. To think that you’d

deceive us like this—to say nothing of the indiscretion of a

schoolmaster who is supposed to be in _charge_ of——”

“Mr. Bromley?” Cornelia cried. “Do you mean Mr. Bromley?”

“I certainly do. I think his conduct——”

“I asked him,” Cornelia interrupted fiercely. “I saw him from the window

and I ran down and walked ahead of him, and almost got run over by a

taxicab on purpose, and he saved me, and I asked him to let me have

lunch with him and told him I was going there anyway. Mamma, don’t you

dare——” Her voice broke; she gulped and choked; her trembling was but

too visible now. “Mamma, if you ever dare say anything against Mr.

Bromley——”

“I agree that we may quite as well leave him out of it,” her mother

said, sharply. “Your own excitement is all the evidence I need that your

father and I have been wise in the decision we’ve just come to.”

Something ominous in this arrested Cornelia’s anger; and she stared at

her mother incredulously. “‘Decision’?” she repeated, slowly. “What

‘decision’?”

“We’re going to put you into Miss Remy’s school on the Hudson,” Mrs.

Cromwell said. “Your father’s already engaged a drawing-room for us on

the afternoon train to-morrow. I’m going with you, and you’ll begin the

new term there on Monday.”

Cornelia still stared. “No——” she said. “No, Mamma, no——”

Mrs. Cromwell was touched, seeing the terror that gathered in her

child’s eyes. “You’ll love it there after a little while, dear. You may

think it’s pleasant to stay here, but after you’ve been there a week or

so, it’s such a lovely place that you——”

But Cornelia threw herself down passionately at her mother’s feet. “No!

No! _No!_” she sobbed, over and over again; and in this half-articulate

anguish, Mrs. Cromwell read and understood Cornelia’s secret indeed. She

was compassionate, yet all the more confirmed in her belief that the

decision just made with her husband was a wise one.

Cornelia could bring no eloquence to alter her fate. “No! No! _No!_” was

only her protest against what she understood was inevitable, though, as

she wept brokenly upon her pillow that night, she thought of one

resource that would avoid the inevitable, so desperate she was. But she

decided to live, and found living hardest when she was on her way to the

train next day, and the route chosen by her father’s chauffeur cruelly

passed the Blue Tea Room.

On the train, thinking of the flying miles that so bitterly lengthened

between her and that sacred little blue-painted room, she came to the

end of the song her heart had chanted there in time to a tapping

foot;—it was the refrain of the car wheels upon the humming rails all

that aching way:

I tell each bead unto the end and there

A cross is hung.

XIV

MRS. DODGE’S NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOUR

AT FIVE o’clock upon a February afternoon the commodious rooms on the

lower floor of Mrs. Cromwell’s big house resounded with all the noise

that a hundred women unaided by firearms could make. A hundred men,

gathered in a similar social manner, if that were possible, might either

be quiet or produce a few uproariously bellowing groups, a matter

depending upon the presence or absence of noisy individuals; but a

hundred habitually soft-voiced women, brought together for a brief

enjoyment of one another’s society and a trifling incidental repast,

must almost inevitably abandon themselves to that vocal rioting

ultimately so helpful to the incomes of the “nerve specialists.”

The strain, of course, is not put upon the nerves by the overpitched

voices alone. At times during Mrs. Cromwell’s “tea” the face of almost

every woman in the house was distressed by the expression of caressive

animation maintained upon it. The most conscientious of the guests held

this expression upon their faces from the moment they entered the house

until they left it; they went about from room to room, from group to

group, shouting indomitably; and, without an instant’s relaxation, kept

a sweet archness frozen upon their faces, no matter how those valiant

faces ached.

Men may not flatter themselves in believing it is for them that women

most ardently sculpture their expressions. A class of women has traduced

the rest: those women who are languid where there are no men. The women

at Mrs. Cromwell’s “tea,” with not a man in sight, so consistently

moulded their faces that the invitations might well have read, “From

Four to Six: a Ladies’ Masque.”

What gave most truly the colour of a masquerade was the unmasking. This,

of course, was never general, nor at any time simultaneous, except with

two or three; yet, here and there, withdrawn a little to the side of a

room, or near a corner, ladies might be seen who wore no expression at

all, or else looked jaded or even frostily observant of the show.

Sometimes clubs of two seemed to form temporarily, the members unmasking

to each other, exhibiting their real faces in confidence, and joining in

criticism of the maskers about them. At such times, if a third lady

approached, the two would immediately resume their masks and bob and

beam; then they might seem to elect her to membership; whereupon all

three would drop their masks, shout gravely, close to one another’s

ears, then presently separate, masking again in facial shapings designed

to picture universal love and jaunty humour.

But among the hundred merrymakers there was one of whom it could not be

said that she was masked; yet, strange to tell, neither could it be said

of her that she was not masked; for either she wore no mask at all or

wore one always. Her face at Mrs. Cromwell’s was precisely as it was

when seen anywhere else; though where it seemed most appropriately

surrounded was in church.

Calm, pale, the chin uplifted a little, with the slant of the head

always more toward heaven than earth, this angelic face was borne high

by the straight throat and slender figure like the oriflamme upon its

staff; and so it passed through the crowd of shouting women, seeming to

move in a spiritual light that fell upon them and illuminated them, yet

illuminated most the uplifted face that was its source. Moreover, upon

the lips the exquisite promise of a smile was continuously hinted; and

the hint foreshadowed how fine the smile would be: how gentle, though a

little martyred by life, and how bravely tolerant.

The beholder waited for this promised heavenly smile, but waited in

vain. “You always think she’s just going to until you see her often

enough to find she never does,” a broad-shouldered matron explained to

two of her friends at Mrs. Cromwell’s. The three had formed one of the

little clubs for a temporary unmasking and were lookers-on for the

moment. “It’s an old worn-out kind of thing to say,” the sturdy matron

continued;—“but I never can resist applying it to her. Nobody can ever

possibly be so good as Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite looks. I’ll even risk

saying that nobody can ever possibly be so good as she seems to behave!”

“Oh, Mrs. Dodge!” one of the others exclaimed. “But isn’t behaviour the

final proof? My husband says conduct is the only test of character.”

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” the brusque Mrs. Dodge

returned. “When we do anything noble, it’s in spite of our true

character; that’s what makes it a noble thing to do. I’ve lived next

door to that woman for five years, and, though I seldom exchange more

than a word with her, I can’t help having her in my sight pretty often.

She always looks noble and she always sounds noble. Even when she says,

‘Isn’t it a lovely day,’ she sounds noble—and, for my part, I’m sick

and tired of her nobility!”

“But my husband says——”

“I don’t care what Mr. Battle says,” Mrs. Dodge interrupted. “The

woman’s a nuisance!”

“To me,” said the third of the group, gravely, “that sounds almost like

sacrilege. I’ve always felt that even though Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite is

still quite a young woman, she’s the focus of spiritual life for this

whole community. I think the people here generally look upon her as the

finest inspiration we have among us.”

“I know they do,” Mrs. Dodge said, irritably. “That’s one reason I think

she’s a pest. People are always trying to live up to her, and it makes

cowards and hypocrites of ’em. Look at her now!”

Mrs. Braithwaite had reached the hostess, who was shouting in concert

with several new arrivals; but when Mrs. Braithwaite appeared, the

voices of all this group were somewhat lowered (though they could not be

lowered much and hope to be audible) and, what was more remarkable, Mrs.

Cromwell’s expression and her manner were instantly altered

perceptibly:—so were the expressions and manners of the others about

her, as Mrs. Dodge vindictively pointed out.

“Look at that!” she said. “Every one of those poor geese is trying to

look like _her_;—they feel they have to seem as noble as she is!

Instinctively they’re all trying to take on her hushed sweetness. Nobody

dares be natural anywhere near her.”

“But that’s because of the affection people feel for her,” Mrs. Battle

explained. “Don’t you feel——”

“Affection your grandmother!” the brusque lady interrupted. “What are

you talking about?”

“Well, reverence, then. Perhaps that’s the better word for the feeling

people have about her. They know how much of her life she gives to good

works. She’s at the head of——”

“Yes, she certainly is!” Mrs. Dodge agreed, bitterly. “She’s the head

and front of every uplifting movement among us. You can’t open your mail

without finding benefit tickets you have to buy for some good cause

she’s chairman of. She’s always the girl that passes the hat: she’s the

one that makes us feel like selfish dogs if we don’t give till it hurts!

She’s the star collector, all right!”

“Well, oughtn’t we to be grateful that she takes such duties upon

herself?”

“Do we ever omit any of our gratitude? Why, the papers are full of it:

‘It is the sense of this committee that, except for the noble,

unflagging, and self-sacrificing devotion of Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite,

this fund could never have reached the generous dimensions necessary for

the carrying on of this work. Therefore, be it resolved that the thanks

of this entire organization’—and so forth. And, as a matter by the way,

you never hear whether she gave any of the fund herself.”

“She gives time. She gives energy. Mr. Battle says, ‘Who gives himself

gives all.’ Mrs. Braithwaite gives herself.”

“Yes, she does,” Mrs. Dodge agreed. “It’s her form of recreation!”

Her two auditors stared at her incredulously, so that she could plainly

see how shocked they were; but, before either of them spoke, a beautiful

change in look and manner came upon them. Both of them elevated their

chins a little, so that their faces slanted more toward heaven than

toward earth; both of them seemed about to smile angelically, but

stopped just short of smiling; a purified softness came into their eyes;

and, altogether, by means of various other subtle little manifestations,

the two ladies began to look noble.

Mrs. Dodge had turned her back toward the group about the hostess, but

without looking round she understood what the change in her two

companions portended. “Good-bye, ladies of Shalott,” she said. “The

curse has come upon you!” And she moved away, just as the ennobled two

stepped forward to meet Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite in her approach to them.

“Clever of me!” Mrs. Dodge thought, with some bitterness. “Getting

myself the reputation of a ‘dangerous woman’!” For she understood well

enough that she would do no injury to Mrs. Braithwaite in attacking

her;—on the contrary, the injury would inevitably be to the assailant;

and yet Mrs. Dodge could not forbear from a little boomerang practice at

this shining and impervious mark. The reason, unfortunately, was

personal, as most reasons are: Mrs. Dodge had come to the “tea” in an

acute state of irritation that had been increasing since morning. In

fact, she had begun the day with a breakfast-table argument of which

Mrs. Braithwaite was the subject.

Mr. Dodge made the unfortunate admission that he had recently sent Mrs.

Braithwaite a check for a hundred dollars, his subscription to the

Workers’ Welfare League; and he was forced into subsequent admissions:

he had no interest in the Workers’ Welfare League, and could give no

reason for sending a check to it except that Mrs. Braithwaite had

written him appealing for a subscription. She was sure he wouldn’t like

to miss the chance to aid in so splendid a movement, she said. Now, as

Mrs. Braithwaite had previously written twice to Mrs. Dodge in almost

the same words, and as Mrs. Dodge had twice replied declining to make a

donation, the argument (so to call it) on Mrs. Dodge’s part was a heated

one. It availed her husband little to protest that he had never heard of

Mrs. Braithwaite’s appeals to his wife; Mrs. Dodge was too greatly

incensed to be reasonable.

Later in the day she was remorseful, realizing that she had taken poor

Mr. Dodge for her anvil because he was within reach, and what she really

wanted to hammer wasn’t. Her remorse applied itself strictly to her

husband, however, and she had none for her feeling toward the lady next

door. Mrs. Dodge and her neighbour had never discovered any point of

congeniality: Mrs. Braithwaite’s high serenity, which Mrs. Dodge called

suavity, was of so paradoxical a smoothness that Mrs. Dodge said it

“rubbed the wrong way from the start.” The uncongeniality had increased

with time until it became a settled dislike, so far as Mrs. Dodge was

concerned; and now, after Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite’s successful appeal to

Mr. Dodge for what Mr. Dodge’s wife had refused, the dislike was

rankling itself into a culmination not unlike an actual and lusty

hatred.

Mrs. Dodge realized her own condition;—she knew hatred is bad for the

hater; but she could not master the continuous anger within her.

Fascinated, she watched Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite at the “tea”; could not

help watching her, although, as the victim of this fascination admitted

to herself in so many words, the sight was “poison” to her. Nor was the

poison alleviated by the effect of Mrs. Braithwaite upon the other

guests: everywhere the angelic presence moved about the capacious rooms

it was preceded and followed by deference. And when Mrs. Braithwaite

joined a woman or a group of women, Mrs. Dodge marked with a hot eye how

that woman or group of women straightway hushed a little and looked

noble.

XV

MRS. DODGE DECLINES TO TELL

MRS. DODGE went home early. “I oughtn’t to have come,” she told her

hostess, confidentially, in parting. “I try to be a Christian sometimes,

but this is one of the days when I think Nero was right.”

“But what——”

“I may tell you—some day,” Mrs. Dodge promised, and gloomily went her

way.

At dinner that evening she was grim, softening little when her husband

plaintively resumed his defence. Lily inquired why her mother was of so

dread a countenance.

“Me,” Mr. Dodge explained. “It began at breakfast before you were up,

and it’s the old culprit, Lily.”

“I guessed that much,” Lily said, cheerfully. “I haven’t been falling in

love with anybody foolish for three or four months now; and that’s the

only thing _I_ ever do to make her look like this, so I knew it must be

you. What you been up to?”

“Aiding in good causes,” he answered, sighing. “She hates me for helping

the Workers, Lily. Our next-door neighbour appealed to Cæsar, over your

mother’s head. I’ve explained two or three hundred times that I didn’t

know there’d been any previous request to her; but she hates my wicked

plotting just the same.”

“No. I only hate your weakness,” Mrs. Dodge said, not relaxing her

severity. “You were so eager to please that woman you couldn’t even wait

to consult your wife. Her writing to you and ignoring what I’d twice

written her was the rudest thing I’ve ever had done to me, and your

donation puts you in the position of approving of it. She did it because

she’s furious with me, and so——”

But Lily interrupted her. “Mamma!” she exclaimed. “Why, you’re talking

just ridiculously! Everybody knows Mrs. Braithwaite couldn’t be

‘furious.’ Not with anybody!”

“Couldn’t she? Then why did she do such an insulting thing to me? Don’t

you suppose she knows it’s insulting to show she can get a poor silly

husband to do something his wife has declined to do? Is there a cattier

trick in the whole cattish repertoire? She did it because she’s the

slyest puss in this community and she knows I know it, and hates me for

it!”

Lily stared in the blankest surprise. “Why, it just sounds like

anarchy!” she cried. “I never heard you break out like that before

except when you were talking about some boy I liked! When did you get

this way about Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite?”

“I’ve never liked her,” Mrs. Dodge said. “Never! I’ve always suspected

she was a whited sepulchre, and now I’ve got proof of it.”

“Proof? That’s quite a strong word, Lydia,” Mr. Dodge reminded her.

“Thank you!” she said. “I mean exactly what I’m saying. Mrs. Braithwaite

did this thing to me out of deliberate spitefulness; and she did it

because she knows what I think of her.”

“But you said you had ‘proof’ that she’s a ‘whited sepulchre,’” he said.

“The word ‘proof’——”

“May we assume that it means reliable evidence reliably confirmed?” Mrs.

Dodge asked, with satirical politeness. “Suppose you’ve done something

disgraceful and another person happens to know you did it. Then suppose

you play a nasty trick on this other person. Wouldn’t it be proof that

you hate him because he knows you did the disgraceful thing?”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” Mr. Dodge said, uncomfortably. “When

did I ever do this disgraceful thing you’re talking about? If it’s

actually disgraceful to subscribe a hundred dollars to the Workers——”

“I’m not talking of that,” his wife said. “I’ll try to put it within

reach of your intellect. Suppose I know Mrs. Braithwaite to be a whited

sepulchre; then if she does an insulting thing to me, isn’t that proof

she’s furious with me for finding her out?”

“No,” he answered. “It might incline one to think that she resented your

poor opinion of her, but it doesn’t prove anything at all.”

“Doesn’t it? You wouldn’t say so if you knew what I know!”

Lily’s eyes widened in hopeful eagerness.

“How exciting!” she cried. “Mamma, _what_ do you know about Mrs.

Braithwaite?”

“Never mind!”

“But you said——”

“I said, ‘Never mind’!”

“But I do mind!” Lily insisted. “You haven’t got any right to get a

person’s interest all worked up like that and then just say, ‘Never

mind’!”

“That’s all I _shall_ say, however,” Mrs. Dodge informed her stubbornly,

and kept to her word, though Lily continued to press her until the meal

was over. Mr. Dodge made no effort to aid his daughter in obtaining the

revelation she sought;—he appeared to be superior to the curiosity that

impelled her; but this appearance of superiority may have been only an

appearance: he may have foreseen that his wife would presently be a

little more explicit about what she had implied against their neighbour.

In fact, Lily had no sooner gone forth upon some youthful junketing,

immediately after dinner, than symptoms of forthcoming revelation were

manifested. Mr. Dodge’s physician allowed him one cigar a day, and it

had just begun to scent the library.

“I suppose, of course, you’re condemning me for a reckless talker,” Mrs.

Dodge said. “You assume that I’m willing to hint slander against a woman

with only my own injury for a basis, instead of facts.”

“On the contrary, Lydia,” he returned, mildly, “I know you wouldn’t have

said what you did unless you have something serious to found it on.”

Probably she was a little mollified, but she did not show it. “So you

give me that much credit?” she asked, sourly. “I imagine it’s because

you’re just as curious as Lily and hope to hear what I wouldn’t tell

her. Well, I’m not going to gratify your curiosity.”

“No?” He picked up a magazine from the table beside his chair, and began

to turn over the pages. “Oh, very well!”

“I _am_ going to tell you _something_, though,” she said. “It’s because

I think you ought to be told at least _part_ of what I know. It may be

good for you.”

“For me?” he inquired, calmly, though he well understood what she was

going to say next.

“Yes; you might find it wiser to consult your wife next time, even when

you’re dealing with people you think are saints.”

“Why, I don’t think Mrs. Braithwaite’s a saint,” he protested. “She

_looks_ rather like one—a pretty one, too—and the general report is

that she _is_ one; but I don’t know anything more than that about her.

She happens to be a neighbour; but we’ve never had the slightest

intimacy with her and her husband. We’ve never been in their house or

they in ours; I bow to her when I see her and sometimes exchange a few

words with her across the hedge between our two yards, usually about the

weather. I don’t think anything about her at all.”

“Then it’s time you did,” Mrs. Dodge said with prompt inconsistency.

“All right. What do you want me to think about her, Lydia?”

“Nothing!” she said, sharply. “Oh, laugh if you want to! I’ll tell you

just this much: I found out something about her by pure accident; and I

decided I’d never tell anybody in the world—not even you. I’m not the

kind of person to wreck anybody’s life exactly; and I decided just to

bury what I happened to find out. What’s more, I’d have kept it _all_

buried if she’d had sense enough to let me alone. I wouldn’t even have

told you that I know something about her.”

“It’s something really serious?”

“‘Serious’?” she said. “No, it’s not ‘serious.’ It’s ruinous.”

Mr. Dodge released a sound from his mouth. “Whee-ew!” Whistled, not

spoken, it was his characteristic token that he found himself impressed.

“You’ve certainly followed the right course, Lydia. Mrs. Leslie

Braithwaite’s standing isn’t just a high one; it’s lofty. I shouldn’t

care to be the person who blasts that statue off its

pedestal;—sometimes statues crush the blasters when they fall. I’m glad

you kept your information to yourself.” He paused, and then, being

morally but an ordinary man, he added, “Not—not that I see any

particular harm in your confiding in my discretion in such a matter.”

“Didn’t I explain I’m not confiding in your discretion?” Mrs. Dodge

returned. “Lately, I don’t believe you have any. I’ve told you this much

so that next time you won’t be so hasty in sending checks to women who

are merely using you to annoy your wife.”

He sighed. “There’s where you puzzle me, Lydia. If you found out

something ruinous about Mrs. Braithwaite, as you say, and if she knows

you did—you intimated she knows it, I think?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then I should think you’d be the last person in the world she’d want to

annoy. I should think she’d do everything on earth to please you and

placate you. She’d want to keep you from telling. That’s the weak point

in your theory, Lydia.”

“It isn’t a theory. I’m speaking of facts.”

“But if she knows you’re aware of what might ruin her,” he insisted,

“she would naturally be afraid of you. Then why would she do a thing

that might infuriate you?”

“Because she’s a woman,” said Mrs. Dodge. “And that’s something you’ll

never understand!”

“But even a woman would behave with some remnants of caution, under the

circumstances, wouldn’t she?”

“Some women might. Mrs. Braithwaite doesn’t because she’s so sure of her

lofty position she thinks she can deliberately insult me and I won’t

dare to do anything about it. She wanted to show me that she isn’t

afraid of me.”

Mr. Dodge looked thoughtfully at that point upon his long cigar where a

slender ring of red glow intervened between the adhering gray ash and

the brown tobacco. “Well, at least she shows a fiery heart,” he said.

“In a way, you’d have to consider her action quite the sporting thing.

You mean she’s sent you a kind of declaration of war, don’t you?”

“If you want to look at it that way. I don’t myself. I take it just as

she meant it, and that’s as a deliberate insult.”

“But it isn’t an ‘insult’ if she only meant it to show she isn’t afraid

of you, Lydia.”

“It is, though,” Mrs. Dodge insisted. “What she means is derision of me.

It’s the same as if she said: ‘Here’s a slap in the face for you. I have

the satisfaction of humiliating you as your punishment for knowing what

you do know about me, and you can’t retaliate, because you aren’t

important enough to be able to injure me!’ It’s just the same as if

she’d said those words to me.”

“It seems quite a message,” he observed. “Of course, I can’t grasp it

myself because I haven’t any conception of this ruinous proceeding of

hers. You were the only witness, I assume?”

“There was a third person present,” Mrs. Dodge said, stiffly. “But not

as a witness.”

“Then what was the third person present doing?”

Mrs. Dodge looked at him with severity, as if she reproved him for

tempting her to do something wrong; then she took from a basket in her

lap a square piece of partly embroidered linen and gave it her

attention, not relaxing this preoccupation where her husband began to

repeat his question.

“What was the third person——”

“I heard you,” Mrs. Dodge interrupted, frowning at her embroidery. “If I

told you that much I’d be virtually telling the whole thing; and I’ve

decided not to do that, even under her deliberate provocation. If I let

myself be provoked into telling, I’d be as small as she is, so you

needn’t hope to get another word out of me on the subject. The only

answer I’ll make to your question is that the third person present was

not her husband.”

“Oh!” Mr. Dodge said, loudly, and, in his sudden enlightenment, whistled

“Whee-ew!” again. “So _that’s_ it!”

“Not at all,” she said. “You needn’t jump to conclusions, and you’ll

never know anything more about it from me. The only way you could ever

know about it would be through her husband’s making a fuss and its

getting into the papers or something.”

“I see,” Mr. Dodge said, apparently not much discouraged. “And, since

it’s something he hasn’t _yet_ made any fuss about, it’s evidently

because he doesn’t know.”

“_He!_” Mrs. Dodge cried, and, in her scorn of Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite’s

consort, dropped the embroidery into the basket and stared fiercely at

Mr. Dodge; though it was really at an invisible Mr. Braithwaite that she

directed this glare of hers. Apparently the unfortunate gentleman was

one of those mere husbands whose existence seems either to amuse or to

incense the wives of more dominant men: Mrs. Dodge certainly appeared to

be incensed. “That miserable little pale shadow of a man!” she cried.

“His name’s Leslie Braithwaite, but do you ever hear him spoken of

except as ‘Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite’s husband’? He goes down to his

little brass-rod works at eight o’clock every morning and gets money for

her until six in the evening. Then he comes home and works on the

account books of her uplifts until bedtime. If they go out, he stands

around with her wrap over his arm and doesn’t speak unless you ask him a

question. If you do, he begins his answer by saying, ‘My wife informs

me’—How could that poor little creature know anything about anything?”

“But _you_ know,” Mr. Dodge persisted. “You _do_ know, do you, Lydia?”

“I know what I know,” she replied, and resumed her preoccupation with

the embroidery.

“But you couldn’t substantiate it by another witness, I take it,” he

said, musingly. “That is, she feels safe against you because if you

should ever decide to tell what you know, she would deny it and put you

in the position of an accuser without proofs. It would simply be your

word against hers, and she’d have the sympathy that goes to the party

attacked and also the advantage of her wide reputation for lofty

character and——”

“Go on,” his wife interrupted. “Amuse yourself all you like; you’ll not

find out another thing from me. Perhaps, if you should ever spend the

morning at home digging around in our flower border along the hedge

between her yard and ours, you might happen to hear her talking to her

chauffeur, and in that case you might get to know something more.

Otherwise, I don’t see how you ever will.”

“Lydia!”

“What?”

“I’m not going to dig in any flower border! I’m not going to spy around

any hedge just to——”

“Neither did I!” she cried, indignantly. “Did you ever know me to do any

spying?”

“Certainly not. But you said——”

“I said ‘If you _happen_ to.’ You don’t suppose I hid and listened

deliberately? I was down on my hands and knees planting tulip bulbs, and

the thick hedge was between us. That’s how it happened, and why, she

never _dreamed_ anybody was near her. I didn’t even hear her come in

that part of the yard until I heard her speaking right by me, on the

other side of the hedge. Please don’t be quite so quick to think your

wife would be willing to spy on another woman.”

“I didn’t,” Mr. Dodge protested, hastily. “What did she say to the

chauffeur?”

“That,” his wife replied, severely, “is something you’ll never hear from

me!”

“From whom shall I hear it, then?”

“I’ve just told you how you might hear it,” she said, plying her needle

and seeming to give it all her attention.

“But I can’t spend my time in the tulip bed, Lydia.”

“That’s not what I meant. I said, ‘If her husband ever makes such a fuss

that it gets into the papers.’”

“If he does, I might find out what she said to the chauffeur?”

“Oh, maybe,” Mrs. Dodge said; and she gave him a sidelong glance of some

sharpness, then quickly seemed to be busy again with her work.

“I don’t make it out at all,” the puzzled gentleman complained.

“Apparently you overheard Mrs. Braithwaite saying something to her

chauffeur that would be ruinous to her if it were known—something that

might cause her husband to make a public uproar if he had heard it

himself. Is that it?”

Mrs. Dodge began to hum fragmentarily to herself and seemed concerned

with nothing in the world except the selection of a proper spool of

thread from her basket.

“Is that it, Lydia?”

“You’ll never find out from me,” she said, searching anxiously through

the basket. “Anyhow, I shouldn’t think you’d need to ask such simple

questions.”

“So that _is_ it! What you heard her say to her chauffeur would ruin her

if people knew about it. Was she talking to the chauffeur about her

husband?”

“Good gracious!” Mrs. Dodge cried, derisively. “What would she be

talking to anybody about _that_ poor little thing for? She never does. I

don’t believe anybody ever heard her mention him in her life!”

“Then was she talking to the chauffeur about some other man?”

“Of all the ideas! If a woman were in love with a man not her husband,

do you think she’d tell her servants about it? Besides, they’ve only had

this chauffeur about two weeks. Have you noticed him?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Dodge. “I’ve seen him sitting in their car in front of

the house several times, and I was quite struck with him. He seemed to

be not only one of the handsomest young men I ever saw, but to have

rather the look of a gentleman.”

“So?” Mrs. Dodge said, inquiringly; and her tone was the more

significant because of her appearing to be wholly preoccupied with her

work-basket. “You noticed _that_, did you?”

“You don’t mean to say——”

“I don’t mean to say anything at all,” she interrupted, crisply. “I’ve

told you that often enough for you to begin to understand it.”

“All right, I do. Well, when she’d said whatever she did say to the

chauffeur, what happened?”

“Oh, that,” she returned, “I’m perfectly willing to tell you. I got up

and looked at her over the hedge. I wasn’t going to stay there and

listen—and I certainly wasn’t going to crawl away on my hands and

knees! I just looked at her quietly and turned away and came into the

house.”

“What did she do?”

“She was absolutely disconcerted. Her face just seemed to go all to

pieces;—it didn’t look like _her_ face at all. She was frightened to

death, and I never saw anything plainer. That’s one reason she hates me

so—because I saw her looking so afraid of me and she couldn’t help it.

Of course, as soon as I got into the house I looked out through the lace

curtains at a window—you could hardly expect me not to—and I saw her

just going back into her own house by the side door. She’d braced up and

looked all stained-glass Joan of Arc again by that time.”

Mr. Dodge sat waggling his head and muttering in wonder. “Of all the

curious things!” he said. “Human nature is so everlastingly full of

oddities it’s always turning up new ones that you sit and stare at and

can’t believe are real. There they are, right before your eyes, and yet

they’re incredible. What did she say to the chauffeur?”

“No, no,” Mrs. Dodge said, reprovingly. “That’s what I _can’t_ tell

you.” And she added, “I should think you could guess it, anyhow.”

“Was there——” He paused a moment, pondering. “Did she use any

specially marked terms of endearment in addressing him?”

“No,” Mrs. Dodge replied, returning her attention to her work;—“not

terms.”

“Oh,” he said. “Just one term, then. She used a single term of

endearment in addressing him. Is that correct?”

Again Mrs. Dodge became musical: she hummed a cheerful tune, but her

face was overcast with a dour solemnity.

“So she did!” her husband exclaimed. “Did she call him ‘dear’?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“‘Dearest’?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Not,” he said, incredulously, “not—‘_darling_’?”

Mrs. Dodge instantly resumed her humming.

“By George!” her husband cried. “Why, that’s just awful! What else did

she say to him besides calling him ‘darling’?”

“I didn’t say she said anything else,” Mrs. Dodge returned, primly. “The

rest wasn’t so important, anyhow, and she was speaking in a low voice. I

thought the rest of it was, ‘Rosemary, that’s for remembrance.’ I

couldn’t be sure because I didn’t hear it distinctly.”

“But you _did_ distinctly hear her call him ‘darling’?”

“What I heard distinctly,” Mrs. Dodge replied, “I heard distinctly.”

“So what Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite said to the chauffeur was this:

‘Rosemary, that’s for remembrance, darling’?”

“You must draw your own conclusions,” she advised him, severely.

“I do—rather!” he returned, and in a marvelling tone slowly pronounced

their neighbour’s name, “Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite! Of all the women in

the world, Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite! And when you rose up, and she saw

you, she just went all to pieces and didn’t say a word?”

“I told you.”

“What did the handsome chauffeur do?”

“Just stood there.”

“It’s beyond anything!” Mr. Dodge’s amazement was not abated;—he shook

his head and uttered groaning sounds of pessimistic wonderment. “I

suppose the true meaning of the saying, ‘It’s the unexpected that

happens,’ is that life is always teaching us to accept the incredible.

How long ago was it?”

“A week ago yesterday.”

“Have you seen her since?”

“I never talk to her or she to me. We say, ‘How do you do? What lovely

weather!’ and that’s all we ever do say. We haven’t even any neighbourly

contact through congenial servants, because of our having coloured

people;—hers are white. I haven’t caught a glimpse of her since it

happened until this afternoon, when she came to Mrs. Cromwell’s tea. Of

course, she knew I was looking at her, and she knew perfectly what I was

thinking—particularly about her insult to me in making such a goose of

my husband.”

“But, Lydia——”

“She was having the time of her life over that!”

“Well,” he said, reflectively, “leaving out the question of whether or

not I was a goose especially, and considering her without personal bias,

I must say that under the circumstances she’s shown a mighty picturesque

intricacy of character, as well as a pretty dashing kind of hardihood.

If, as you believe, she sent her note to me as really a derisive

taunt—a gauntlet flung at you with mocking laughter—and all the while

she knows you know of her philandering with a good-looking varlet——”

“She’s a bad woman!” Mrs. Dodge exclaimed, angrily. “That’s all there is

to it, and you needn’t be so poetical about her!”

“Good gracious, Lydia, I wasn’t——”

“Never mind! We can talk of her just as well without any references to

gauntlets and mocking laughter and varlets. That is, if you insist upon

talking about her at all. For my part, I prefer just to keep her

entirely out of my mind.”

“Very well,” he assented, meekly. “I don’t know that I can keep anything

so singular out of my mind; but I won’t speak of it if it annoys you.

What else shall we talk of?”

“Anything in the world except that detestable woman,” Mrs. Dodge

replied. Then, after some moments of silence over her embroidery, she

added abruptly, “Of course, _you_ don’t think she’s detestable!”

“I only said——”

“‘Picturesque’ was what you said. ‘Dashing’ was another thing you said.

You’re quite fascinated with her derisive gauntlets and her mocking

laughter! Dear _me_, if that isn’t like men!”

“But I only——”

“Oh, murder!” Mrs. Dodge moaned, interrupting him. “I thought you said

you weren’t going to _talk_ about her any more!”

At this he showed spirit enough to laugh. “You know well enough we’re

both going to keep on talking about her, Lydia. What do you intend to

do?”

“About what?” Mrs. Dodge looked surprised. “About _her_, you mean? Why,

naturally, I intend to keep on doing what I have been doing, and that’s

nothing whatever except to hold my peace;—I don’t descend to the level

of feuds with intriguing women. She gave me a clew, though, this

afternoon.”

“What sort of a clew, Lydia?”

“I don’t suppose a man could understand, but I’ll try to give you a

glimmering. When she wrote that note to you, there was one thing she

hadn’t thought of. She thought of it this afternoon at that tea: it

struck her all of a sudden that I could make things a little unpleasant

for her if I took the notion to. She just happened to remember that Mrs.

Cromwell is my most intimate friend, and that she is the grandest old

rock-bottomed mountain this community can boast. That woman all at once

remembered, and got afraid I might tell my friends.”

“How do you know she did?”

“That’s what a man couldn’t see. I knew it by a lot of little things I

couldn’t put into words if I tried, but principally I knew it by

watching her manner with Mrs. Cromwell.”

“You mean she tried to ingratiate herself?” he asked. “Her manner was

more winsome or flattering than usual?”

“No, not exactly. Not so open—you couldn’t understand—but it was

perfectly clear to me she was having the time of her life thinking of

what she’d done to me through my husband’s weakness, when all at once

she thought of my influence with the Cromwells. Well, she’s afraid of

it, and it made her wish she hadn’t gone quite so far with me. She’d

give a whole lot to-night, I’ll wager, if she’d been just a little less

picturesque with her gauntlet throwing and her mocking laughter! You

asked me what I was going to do and I told you ‘Nothing.’ But _she’ll_

do something. She’s afraid, and she’ll make a move of some sort. You’ll

see.”

“But what? What could she do?”

“I don’t know, but you’ll see. You’ll see before long, too.”

“Well, I’m inclined to hope so,” he said. “It would certainly be

interesting; but I doubt her making any move at all. I’m afraid you

won’t turn out to be a good prophet.”

On the contrary, he himself was a poor prophet; for sometimes destiny

seems to juggle miraculously with coincidences in order to attract our

attention to the undiscovered laws that produce them. In fact, Mr. Dodge

was so poor a prophet—and so near to intentional burlesque are the

manners of destiny in its coincidence juggling—that at this moment Mrs.

Leslie Braithwaite’s husband had just rung the Dodges’ front door bell.

Two minutes later a mulatto housemaid appeared in the doorway of the

library and produced a sensational effect merely by saying, “Mrs.

Braithwaite and Mr. Braithwaite is calling. I showed ’em into the

drawing-room.”

She withdrew, and the staggered couple, after an interval of incoherent

whispering, went forth to welcome their guests.

XVI

MRS. LESLIE BRAITHWAITE’S HUSBAND

MRS. BRAITHWAITE was superb;—at least, that was Mr. Dodge’s impersonal

conception of her. Never before had he seen sainthood so suavely

combined with a piquant beauty, nor an evening gown of dull red silk and

black lace so exquisitely invested with an angelic presence. For

to-night this lady looked not only noble, she looked charming; and

either his wife had made a grotesque mistake or he stood before an

actress unmatched in his experience. She began talking at once, in her

serene and sweet contralto voice—a beautiful voice, delicately hushed

and almost imperceptibly precise in its pronunciation. “It seemed to us

really rather absurd, Mrs. Dodge, that you and your husband should be

our next-door neighbours for so long without even having set foot in our

house or we in yours. And as Mr. Dodge has lately been so generous to my

poor little Workers’ Welfare League—the unhappy creatures do need help

so, and the ladies of the committee were so touched by your kindness,

Mr. Dodge—we thought we’d just make that an excuse to call, even thus

informally and for only a few minutes. We wanted to express the thanks

of the League, of course, and we thought it was about time to say we

aren’t really so unneighbourly as we may have seemed—and we hope you

aren’t, either!”

“No, indeed,” Mr. Dodge responded with a hasty glance of sidelong

uneasiness at his wife. Her large face was red and rather dismayingly

fierce as she sat stiffly in the stiffest chair in the Dodges’

white-walled, cold, and rigidly symmetrical drawing-room; but she said,

“No, indeed,” too, though not so heartily as her husband did. In fact,

she said it grimly; yet he was relieved, for her expression made him

fear that she would say nothing at all.

“One of the things I find to regret about modern existence,” Mrs.

Braithwaite continued, in her beautiful voice, “is the disappearance of

neighbourliness even in a quiet suburban life like yours and ours. Of

course, this is anything but a new thought, yet how concretely our two

houses have illustrated it! So it did seem time, at last, to break the

ice, especially as I have good reason to think that just these last few

days you must have been thinking of me as quite a naughty person, Mrs.

Dodge.”

Mrs. Dodge stared at her; appeared to stare not only with astounded eyes

but with a slowly opening mouth. “What? What did you say?” she asked,

huskily.

“I’m afraid you’ve been thinking of me as rather naughty,” the serene

caller said, and her ever promised smile seemed a little more

emphatically promised than it had been. “I ought to confess to you that

as a collector for my poor little Workers’ League I’m terribly

unscrupulous. It’s such a struggling little organization, and the need

of help is so frightfully pressing, I may as well admit I haven’t any

scruples at all how I get money for it. Yet, of course, I know I ought

to apologize for asking Mr. Dodge to contribute to a cause that you

didn’t feel particularly interested in yourself.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Dodge said, and to her husband’s consternation she added

formidably: “Is _that_ what you’re talking about!”

No disastrous effect was visible, however. Mrs. Braithwaite nodded

sunnily. “I’m sure you’ll forgive me for the sake of the happiness the

money brought to a pitiful little family—the father hasn’t had any work

for eight months; there are four young children and one just born. If

you could see their joy when——”

“I dare say!” Mrs. Dodge interrupted. “I’m glad it did _some_ good!”

“I was sure you’d feel so.” Mrs. Braithwaite glanced gently at her host,

whose face was a remarkable study of geniality in conflict with

apprehension;—then her gaze returned to her hostess. “I wanted to make

my peace not only for myself,” she added, “but for your husband. I’m

sure you’re going to forgive him, Mrs. Dodge.”