Innocently, Mr. Dodge supposed this to be intended as a kindly effort on

his behalf and in the general interests of amiability. He was surprised,

therefore, and his apprehensions of an outbreak on the part of his wife

were little abated, when he perceived that its effect upon her was far

from placative. Her ample figure seemed to swell; she was red but grew

redder; her action in breathing became not only visible but noticeable;

to his appalled vision she seemed about to snort forth sparks. For

several perilous moments she did not speak;—then, after compressing her

lips tightly, she said: “Mr. Dodge sent you his check upon my direction,

of course. Naturally, he consulted me. I told him that since you had

twice solicited me for a subscription it would be best for us to send

you some money and be done with it.”

Mrs. Braithwaite uttered a soothing sound as of amused relief. “That’s

so much nicer,” she said. “I was afraid you might have been annoyed with

both of us—with both poor Mr. Dodge and myself—but that exculpates us.

I’m so very glad.” She turned to the perturbed host. “I was _so_ afraid

I’d involved you, Mr. Dodge—perhaps quite beyond forgiveness.”

“Not at all—not at all,” he said, removing his gaze with difficulty

from his wife’s face. “Oh, no. Everything—everything’s been perfectly

pleasant,” he floundered, and Mrs. Dodge’s expression did not reassure

him that he was saying the right thing. “Perfectly—pleasant,” he

repeated, feebly.

“I _so_ hoped it would be,” Mrs. Braithwaite said. “I hoped Mrs. Dodge

wouldn’t be _very_ hard on you for aiding in such a good cause.”

“No,” he returned, nervously. “No, she—she wasn’t. She proved to be

entirely—ah—amiable, of course.” And again he was dismayed by Mrs.

Dodge’s expression.

“Of course,” Mrs. Braithwaite agreed, sunnily, with only the quickest

and sweetest little fling of a glance at her hostess, “I was _sure_

she’d forgive you. Well, at any rate, we’ve both made our peace with her

now and established the _entente cordiale_, I hope.” She turned toward

her husband and spoke his name gently, in the tone that is none the less

a command to the obedient follower: “Leslie.” It was apparently her

permission for him to prepare himself for departure; but it may also

have been a signal or command for him to do something else;—Mr. Dodge

noticed that it brought an oddly plaintive look into the eyes of the

small and dark Braithwaite.

Throughout the brief but strained interview he had been sitting in one

of the Dodges’ rigid chairs as quietly as if he had been a well-behaved

little son of Mrs. Braithwaite’s, brought along to make a call upon

grown people. He was slender as well as short; of a delicate, almost

fragile, appearance; and in company habitually so silent, so

self-obliterative that it might well have been a matter of doubt whether

he was profoundly secretive or of an overwhelming timidity. But as he

sat in the Dodges’ slim black chair, himself rather like that chair,

with his trim, thin little black legs primly uncrossed and his small

black back straight and stiff, there were suggestions that he was more

secretive than timid. Under his eyes were semicircles of darkness, as if

part of what he secreted might have been a recent anguish, either

physical or mental. Moreover, if he had been in reality the well-trained

little boy his manners during this short evening call had suggested,

those semicircles under his eyes would have told of anguish so acute

that the little boy had wept.

When his wife said “Leslie,” he swallowed; there came into his eyes the

odd and plaintive look his host had noticed—it was the look now not of

a good little boy but of a good little dog, obedient in a painful task

set by the adored master—and he stood up immediately.

“We really must be running,” his wife said, rising, too. “This was just

our funny little effort to break the ice. I do hope it has, and that

you’ll both come in to see us some evening. I _do_ hope you’ll _both_

come.” She put an almost imperceptible stress on the word “both” as she

moved toward the door; then said “Leslie” again. He was still standing

beside his chair.

“Ah—” he said; then paused and coughed. “I—I wonder——”

“Yes?” his host said, encouragingly.

“I—that is, I was going to say, by the way, I wonder if you happen to

know of a good chauffeur, Mr. Dodge.”

At this, Mrs. Dodge’s breathing became audible as well as visible, there

fell a moment of such silence.

“A—a chauffeur? No,” Mr. Dodge said. “No, I don’t think I do. We

haven’t one ourselves; we do our own driving. A chauffeur? No. I’m

afraid I don’t know of any.”

“I see,” Braithwaite returned. “I just happened to ask. We’ve—ah—lost

the man we’ve had lately. He was a very good driver and we haven’t

anybody to take his place.”

Mrs. Dodge spoke sepulchrally as she rose from her chair. “That’s too

bad,” she said, and, to her husband’s relief, stopped there, adding

nothing.

“Yes,” Braithwaite assented. “He was a very good driver indeed; but he

was a college graduate and only yesterday he found another position,

tutoring, and left us. He was a very good man—Dolling.”

“What?” Mr. Dodge said. “Who?”

“Dolling,” Braithwaite replied; and followed his wife to the door. “I

just happened to mention his name: Dolling. I—I didn’t address you as

‘darling,’ Mr. Dodge, though I see how you might easily have thought I

did. The man’s name was Dolling. I shouldn’t like you to think I’d take

the liberty of calling _you_——”

But here he was interrupted by such an uproarious shout of laughter from

his host that his final words were lost. Mr. Dodge’s laughter continued,

though it was interspersed with hearty expressions of hospitality and

parting cheer, until the callers had passed the outer threshold and the

door had closed behind them. Then the hilarious gentleman returned from

the hall to face a wife who found nothing in the world, just then, a

laughing matter.

“The worst thing you did,” she assured him, “was to be so fascinated

that you told her I’d been amiable to you about your sending that

check—just after I said I knew all about it _before_ you sent it and

had _told_ you to send it! That was a pleasant position to put your wife

in, wasn’t it?”

“Lydia!” he shouted, still outrageous in his mirth. “Let’s forget that

part of it and remember only Dolling!”

“All right,” she said, and her angry eyes flashed. “Suppose his name

_was_ Dolling. What was she talking to him about rosemary and

remembrance for?”

“I don’t know, and it doesn’t seem important. The only thing I can get

my mind on is your keeping to yourself so solemnly the scandalous

romance of Dolling!” And becoming more respectably sober, for a time, he

asked her: “Don’t you really see a little fun in it, Lydia?”

“What!” she cried. “Do you? After you saw that wretched little man of

hers stand up there and recite his lesson like a trained monkey? Did you

look at _her_ while he was performing? She stood in the doorway and held

the whip-lash over him till he finished! And if this idol of yours is so

innocent and pure, why did she go all to pieces the way she did when she

saw me that morning by the hedge?”

“Why, don’t you see?” he cried. “Of course she saw you thought she’d

called the man ‘darling’! She knew you didn’t know his name was Dolling.

Isn’t it plain to you _yet_?”

“No!” his wife said, vehemently. “It isn’t plain to me and it never will

be!”

XVII

“DOLLING”

AGAINST all reason she persisted in a sinister interpretation of her

lovely neighbour’s conduct;—never would Mrs. Dodge admit that Mr. Dodge

had the right of the matter, and after a time she complained that she

found his continued interest in it “pretty tiresome.”

“You keep bringing it up,” she said, “because you think you’ve had a

wretched little triumph over me. It’s one of those things that never can

be settled either way, and I don’t care to talk of it any more. If you

want to occupy your spare thoughts I have a topic to offer you.”

“What topic?”

Mrs. Dodge shook her head in a certain way. “Lily.”

“Oh, dear me!” he said. “It isn’t happening again?”

She informed him that it was, indeed. Lily’s extreme affections were

once more engaged. “We’re in for it!” was the mother’s preface, as she

began the revelation; and, when she concluded, her husband sorrowfully

agreed with her.

“It’s awful now and will be worse,” he said; and thus his “spare

thoughts” became but too thoroughly occupied. In his growing anxiety

over his daughter, he ceased to think of his neighbours;—the handsome

chauffeur passed from his mind. Then abruptly, one day, as the wandering

searchlight of a harboured ship may startlingly clarify some obscure

thing upon the shore, a chance conjuncture illuminated for him most

strangely the episode of Dolling.

He was lunching with a younger member of his firm in a canyon restaurant

downtown, and his attention happened to become concentrated upon a

debonair young man who had finished his lunch and was now engaged in

affable discussion with the pretty cashier. He was one of those young

men, sometimes encountered, who have not only a strong masculine beauty,

but the look of talent, with both the beauty and the talent belittled by

an irresponsible twinkle of the eye. Standing below the level of the

cashier’s desk, which was upon a platform, there was something about him

that suggested a laughing Romeo; and, in response, the cashier was

evidently not unwilling to play a flippant Juliet. She tossed her head

at him, tapped his cheek with a pencil, chattering eagerly; she blushed,

laughed, and at last looked yearningly after him as he went away. Mr.

Dodge also looked; for the young man was Dolling, once Mrs. Leslie

Braithwaite’s chauffeur.

“Fine little bit of comedy, that,” the junior member of Mr. Dodge’s firm

remarked, across their small table. “Talked her into giving him credit

for his lunch. She’ll have to make it up out of her own pocket until he

pays her. Of course, he’s done it before, and she knows him.

Characteristic of that fellow;—he’s a great hand to put it over with

the girls!”

“Do you know him, Williams?” Mr. Dodge asked, a little interested.

“Know him? Lord, yes! He was in my class at college till he got fired in

sophomore year. Every now and then he comes to me and I have to stake

him. He’s a reporter just now; but it’s always the same—whether he’s

working or not, he never has any money. He can do anything: act, sing,

break horses, drive an airplane, any kind of newspaper work—publishes

poetry in the papers sometimes, and he’s not such a bad poet, either, at

that. But he’s just one of these natural-born drifters—too good looking

and too restless. He never holds a job more than a couple of months.”

“I suppose not,” Mr. Dodge said, absently. “I suppose he’s tried a good

many.”

“Rather!” Williams exclaimed. “I’ve got him I don’t know how many,

myself. The last time I did he was pretty well down and out, and the

best I could get for him was a chauffeur’s job for a little cuss I

happened to know in the brass trade—Braithwaite. Lives out your way

somewhere, I think. O’Boyle _took_ it all right; it was chauff or

starve!”

“I beg your pardon. Who took what?”

“O’Boyle,” said Williams. “Charlie O’Boyle, the man we’re talking

about—the chap that was just conning the cashier yonder. I was telling

you he took a job as chauffeur for a family out your way in the

suburbs.”

“Yes, I understood,” Mr. Dodge returned, with more gravity than Williams

expected as a tribute to this casual narrative. “You said this O’Boyle

became a chauffeur to some people named Braithwaite and that you

obtained the position for him. I merely wondered—I suppose when you

recommended this O’Boyle to Mr. Braithwaite you—ah—you mentioned his

name? I mean to say: you introduced O’Boyle as O’Boyle.”

“Well, naturally,” Williams replied, surprised and a little nettled.

“Why wouldn’t I? I wouldn’t expect people to take on a man for a family

job like that and not tell ’em his _name_, would I? I don’t see what

you——”

“Nothing,” Mr. Dodge said, hurriedly. “Nothing at all. It was a

ridiculous question. My mind was wandering to other things, or I

shouldn’t have asked it. We’d better get down to business, I suppose.”

But that was something his wandering mind refused to do; nor would it

under any consideration or pressure “get down to business” during the

rest of that afternoon. He went home early, and, walking from his

suburban station in the first twilight of a gray but rainless November

day, arrived at his own gate just as the Braithwaites’ closed car drew

up at the curb before the next house.

An elderly negro chauffeur climbed down rustily from his seat at the

wheel and opened the shining door; Mrs. Braithwaite stepped gracefully

down, and, with her lovely saint’s face uplifted above dark furs, she

crossed the pavement, entered the low iron gateway, and walked up the

wide stone path that led through the lawn to the house. On the opposite

side of the street a group of impressed women stopped to stare, grateful

for the favouring chance that gave them this glimpse of the great lady.

Mr. Braithwaite descended from the car and followed his wife toward the

house. He did not overtake her and walk beside her; but his

insignificant legs beneath his overcoat kept his small feet moving in

neat short steps a little way behind her.

Meanwhile, the pausing neighbour gazed at them and his open mouth showed

how he pondered. It was not upon this strange woman, a little of whose

strangeness had so lately been revealed to him, that he pondered most,

nor about her that he most profoundly wondered. For, strange as the

woman seemed to him, far stranger seemed the little creature pattering

so faithfully behind her up the walk.

In so helpless a fidelity Mr. Dodge felt something touching; and

perhaps, too, he felt that men must keep men’s secrets. At all events,

he made a high resolve. It would be hard on Mrs. Dodge, even unfair to

her; but then and there he made up his mind that for the sake of Mrs.

Leslie Braithwaite’s husband he would never tell anybody—and of all the

world he would never tell Mrs. Dodge—what he had learned that day about

Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite’s husband’s loyalty.

XVIII

LILY’S FRIEND ADA

INDOORS Mr. Dodge too quickly found other matter to occupy his mind.

Mrs. Dodge hurried down the stairs to set before him an account of a new

phase in Lily’s present romance, and they began their daily discussion

of their daughter’s beglamoured condition. In a way this was a strange

thing for them to do, because, like many other fathers and mothers in

such parental mazes, they realized that they struggled with a mystery

beyond their comprehension. Lily’s condition was something about which

they really knew nothing, and least of all did they guess what part her

dearest girl-friend had in it.

Lily had formed with the sturdy Ada Corey one of those friendships that

sometimes suggest to observers an unworthy but persistent thought upon

the profundity of girlish vanity. So often is a beautiful girl’s best

girl-friend the precise companion piece to set off most abundantly the

charms of the beauty, or, if both girls of a pair be well-favoured, so

frequently is one dark and the other fair, and each the best obtainable

background for the other, that the spectator is almost forced to suppose

many such intimacies to be deliberately founded upon a pictorial basis.

But this is not to say that these decorative elections to friendship are

unaccompanied by genuine fondness; and although Lily Dodge found her

background in the more substantial Ada, she found also something to lean

upon and cling to and admire. For Lily was one of those girls we call

ethereal, because they do not seem intended to remain long in a world

their etherealness makes appear gross. They usually do remain as long as

other people do, yet their seeming almost poised for a winging departure

brings them indulgences and cherishings not shown to that stouter,

self-reliant type to which Ada Corey was thought to belong.

Late on that same gray but rainless November afternoon, Ada, herself,

spoke of this elaborate difference between them. “I don’t see why _you_

worry, Lily,” she said. “I believe you could get away with anything!

You’re the kind that can.”

“Oh, not _this_!” Lily protested, in a wailing whisper. No one was near

them; but in her trouble she seemed to fear the garrulity of even the

old forest trees of the park through which the two were taking an

autumnal stroll. “Nobody in the world could get out of such a miserable

state of things as I’ve got myself into _now_, Ada.”

But this was by no means Miss Corey’s first experience of her friend’s

confidences of despair. “I wouldn’t bother about it at all, if I were

you, Lily,” she said, cheerfully. “I wouldn’t give it a thought.”

“You wouldn’t?” Lily cried, feebly, and her incredulity was further

expressed by her feet, which refused to bear her onward in so amazed a

condition. She halted, facing her companion in a stricken manner. “You

wouldn’t give it a thought? When I’ve just told you that this time it’s

_three_!”

“No,” Ada returned, stoutly. “I wouldn’t. If I were _you_, I wouldn’t. I

wouldn’t even if it were four!”

Lily moaned, and in a hopeless appeal for a higher witness to such

folly, cast her eyes to heaven—or at least to as much of the dimming

sky as roofed over the tattered brown foliage above her. “You wouldn’t

give it a thought! Not even if there were four of ’em.” Then, as the

woodland spot where they had stopped was somewhat secluded and apart

from the main-travelled roads of the park, Lily felt at liberty to lean

against a tree and apply a hand to her forehead in an excellent gesture

of anguish. “I’m a goner this time, Ada,” she murmured. “I’m a goner!”

“You aren’t anything of the kind,” Miss Corey assured her. “I tell you

it’s not worth bothering about.”

“Oh!” Lily uttered a sound of indignation, dropped the dramatic little

hand, and spoke sharply. “You stand there, Ada Corey, and tell me that

if such a thing happened to you, you wouldn’t give it a thought?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You did! You just said——”

“No; I said if I were _you_,” Ada explained. “A thing like this wouldn’t

happen to me.”

“Why wouldn’t it? It might happen to anybody,” Lily returned, quickly.

“Suppose it did happen to you? Do you mean to tell me that if three

separate, individual men all pretty nearly considered themselves

practically almost engaged to be married to you at the same time, you

wouldn’t give it a thought? You wouldn’t bother about it at _all_?”

“I said I wouldn’t if I were _you_,” Ada insisted.

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“For just the reason I told you. Because you’re the kind that can get

away with anything.”

“But I can’t!” Lily cried. “I’m _always_ in some sort of miserable mess

or other.”

“Yes, pretty often,” her friend assented. “But it’s always a new one,

and nobody ever does anything about the old one, so why should you care?

You’ll write one of these three boys a little weepy note, and you’ll

have a little weepy scene with another, and that’ll leave only the one

you like the best, and——”

“But I don’t,” Lily interrupted, piteously. “I don’t absolutely _know_ I

like him as much as I thought I did, either.”

“What!” Ada cried. “Not even _him_?”

“How can anybody ever be absolutely certain? I mean certain enough to

get married. You know it’s a thing you’ve got to look at pretty

seriously, Ada—getting actually _married_.”

But for the moment Ada did not seem to be sympathetic;—she was staring

wide-eyed at her friend. “So you’re going to wriggle out of it with all

three of them.”

“But maybe I can’t,” Lily moaned. “Suppose they insisted? Suppose they

just wouldn’t _let_ me?”

“Has there ever been anything anybody wouldn’t let you do?”

Lily moaned again. “You mean I’m spoiled. You mean people let me make

’em miserable. Oh, it’s true, Ada! I do wish I could be more like you.”

“Like me?” Ada laughed shortly. “You wouldn’t for the world.”

“Yes, I would.” Lily took her friend’s hand in her own. “I’d give

anything in the world to be like you. You don’t _know_ what a trouble I

am to my mother and father! They’re always in some kind of stew or other

over me, and I can’t help it, because I’m always getting myself into

such fearful messes. You never trouble _your_ family; you’re always a

comfort to ’em. You aren’t romantic and imaginative and sentimental and

fly-off-the-handle, the way I am. You’re steady and reliable, and people

always know exactly where to find you.”

But upon this, Ada looked puzzled. “Is that so?” she asked, gravely. “Is

that how I seem to you, Lily?”

“To me? Good heavens! Don’t you know that’s the way everybody thinks of

you? Everybody knows you’re dependable;—you’re what they call ‘so

satisfactory,’ Ada. Your family and everybody else know you’ll never do

anything reckless or susceptible or dreamy. Nobody on earth knows what

_I’ll_ do, because I don’t myself. Just _look_ at the difference between

us!”

With that, as if the bodily contrast of the two expressed the contrast

in character she had in mind, Lily extended her arms sidewise from her

in an emotional gesture inviting an inspection of herself foredoomed to

be damning; then pointed dramatically at Ada. “Just look at you and then

look at me,” she cried. “See what a _terrible_ difference it is!”

She dropped her arms to her sides, submitting her case to an invisible

jury, who might well have returned a verdict that at least the outward

difference was pleasant rather than terrible. In the twilight beneath

the trees the fair-haired and ethereal Lily, in her slim gray dress,

seemed to be made of a few wisps of mist and a little gold. About her

was a plaintive grace, not a quality of her dark-eyed and more

substantial companion; yet both girls were comely; both were of the

peach-bloom age that follows the awkward years; each had a grace of her

own; and neither had cause to be disturbed by anything wherein she was

unlike the other. Yet, as it happened, both were so disturbed.

Ada’s gravity had increased. “You’re all wrong about it, Lily,” she

said. “I’d give anything in the world to be like you.”

“What!” Lily cried. “You wouldn’t! Why?”

“Because of what I said. You can get away with anything, and people

expect it. But if _I_ ever did anything queer it would upset everybody.

There’d be no end to it.”

“But you never _will_!” Lily almost shouted.

“Won’t I?” Ada returned, her gravity not relaxing. “What makes you so

sure?”

“Why, you simply couldn’t! _My_ life is just one long eternal succession

of queernesses. I _never_ do anything rational; I don’t seem to know

_how_; but you’re never anything but sensible, Ada. You’ll fall in love

sensibly some day—not like me, but with just one man at a time—and

he’ll be exactly the person your family’ll think you ought to be in love

with. And you’ll have a nice, comfortable wedding, without any of the

ushers misbehaving because you wouldn’t marry _him_ instead;—and then

you’ll bring up a large family to go to church every Sunday and take an

interest in missionary work and everything. Don’t you see how much _I_

ought to be like that, and how much you really are that? Don’t you,

Ada?”

Ada shook her head slowly. “It doesn’t quite seem so,” she said. Then,

beginning to stroll onward, continuing their walk, she looked even more

serious than before, and inquired: “What are you going to wear to-morrow

night?”

Lines almost tragic appeared upon Lily’s forehead, and her previously

mentioned troubles seemed of light account compared to this one. “Oh,

dear!” she wailed. “That’s _another_ thing that’s been on my mind all

day. I haven’t the least idea. What would you?”

She was still hopelessly preoccupied with the problem when she reached

home, after parting with Ada at the park gates; and in her own pretty

room she went to one of her two clothes’-closets even before she went to

a mirror. Frowning, she looked over her party dresses.

The slim, tender-coloured fabrics, charming even though unoccupied, hung

weightlessly upon small, shoulderlike shapes of nickeled wire; and as

she restlessly slid the hangers to and fro along the groved central rail

that held them, she produced a delicate swish and flutter among the

silks and chiffons before her, so that they were like a little pageant

of pretty ghosts of the dances to which their young mistress had worn

them. Lily approved of none of them, however; and, hearing her mother’s

firm step approaching the open door of the room, behind her, she said,

desperately, without turning, “I haven’t got a thing, Mamma; I haven’t

got a single thing!”

Mrs. Dodge, that solid matron, so inexplicably unlike her daughter, came

into the room breathing audibly after an unusually hurried ascent of the

stairs. “Lily,” she said, in the tone of one who still controls an

impending emotion, “Lily, you must never do this to me again. I can’t

stand it.”

“Do what to you again?” Lily inquired, absently, not turning from her

inspection. “I haven’t got a thing I could wear to-morrow night, Mamma.

Absolutely, I don’t see how I can go unless——”

“_Lily!_” Mrs. Dodge exclaimed in a tone so eloquently vehement as to

command a part of her daughter’s attention. “Listen to me!”

Lily half turned, holding forth for exhibition a dress she had removed

from its hanger. “What’s the matter, Mamma? This pale blue chiffon is

absolutely the only thing I haven’t worn so often I just couldn’t face

anybody in again; but it never _was_ a becoming——”

“Lily, put down that dress and listen to me!”

“I’m sure it won’t do,” the daughter said, regretfully; but she obeyed

and hung the dress over the back of a chair. Then she turned to her

dressing-table mirror and began to remove her small hat. “Are you upset

or anything, Mamma?”

“Upset? No! I’m indignant,” Mrs. Dodge explained, fiercely. “If you ever

do such a thing to me again——”

“What? Why, I haven’t even seen you since lunch time, Mamma. How could I

have been doing anything to you when I wasn’t anywhere around to _do_

it?”

“You know well enough what you did to me! You broke three separate

engagements with three separate——”

But Lily’s light laughter interrupted. “Oh, did the poor things call

up?” she asked, and seemed to be pleasantly surprised. “Well, my not

being here might be doing something to _them_, maybe,” she added,

reflectively;—“but I don’t see how it was doing anything to _you_,

Mamma.”

“You don’t? You break three separate engagements without a word, and

leave me here to explain it; and then you say that wasn’t doing anything

to me!”

“But I didn’t leave you to do it. I didn’t even know you were going to

be home this afternoon. I just thought maybe they’d call up and find I

was out, and that’d be the end of it. What in the world did you go to

the telephone _for_, Mamma?”

“Because two of them asked for me.”

“Did they? What for?”

“To ask where you _were_,” Mrs. Dodge said, explosively. “Each of ’em

kept me about fifteen minutes.”

“That was very inconsiderate,” Lily observed. “Especially as I hadn’t

absolutely promised either of ’em I’d go. I only said to call up about

three and _probably_ I would. I don’t think they ought to have kept you

so——”

“That isn’t what I’m complaining of,” her mother interrupted, grimly.

“It was disagreeable, especially as I was unable to give either of them

any information and they both seemed to think I could if they kept _at_

me long enough! It was trying, but it was bearable. What I refuse to

have happen again, though, is what has been happening all the rest of

the afternoon.”

Lily proved herself strangely able to divine her mother’s meaning

without further explanation. Pink at once became noticeable upon her

cheeks. “Oh, goodness!” she said. “Price didn’t come _in_, did he?”

“For two and one-half hours,” Mrs. Dodge replied, slowly and harshly.

“For that length of time this afternoon I have been favoured with the

society and conversation—the continuous conversation, I may say—of Mr.

Price Gleason. I am strong enough to bear certain things, but not strong

enough to bear certain other things, and I want to tell you that this is

something you must never do to me again.”

Lily sank into a chair, staring widely. “Oh, goodness!” she said. “When

did he go?”

“Not until about five minutes before you came in.”

“What did he say?”

“What didn’t he?” Mrs. Dodge returned. “He had time enough!”

Upon this Lily’s expression, grown grave, became tenderly compassionate.

“Was he—was he _terribly_ hurt with me, Mamma?”

“Well, I shouldn’t say so—no. No, I don’t think he was just what one

might call stricken. At first he seemed rather depressed—but not for

long. I don’t think that young man will ever be much depressed about

anything while he has a listener. All he asks of life is an audience.”

“He talks beautifully,” Lily said, with the dreamy look her mother knew

so well. “Don’t you think he does, Mamma? What did he talk about?”

“About nothing,” Mrs. Dodge answered cruelly. “I mean, of course, about

himself.”

“Mamma!” Lily cried, quickly, and her sensitive face showed the pain she

felt. “That isn’t kind, and it isn’t fair!”

“Isn’t it? I never in my life listened to such a conceited and

unveracious rigmarole as that young man favoured me with this afternoon.

I did everything a Christian woman could to show him I wanted him to go,

but he never stopped. You _can’t_ interrupt him when he’s wound up like

that, and he’s always wound up. He makes an oration of it; he stands up,

gestures like an actor, and walks around and up and down when he tells

you how he’s done all the great things he almost believes in himself

when he’s talking about ’em. I never knew such a story-teller in my

life!”

“Mamma!”

“I never did,” Mrs. Dodge said. “He told me he’d killed three men in

Mexico.”

“But, Mamma, it’s true! He did! He was prospecting for silver mines and

all sorts of things in Mexico.”

“I don’t believe a word of it, Lily;—it sounded much too much like

‘adventure stories.’ I don’t think he did it; I think he read it. He

said he killed those three men because they tried to ‘jump his claim,’

while he was away on a visit to his friend, the President of Mexico, and

that afterward the President made him a general in the Mexican Army, and

he fought in seven battles and was wounded twelve times. That was five

years ago, so he must have been a general when he was about nineteen. In

all my life I never heard——”

“If you please, Mamma!” Lily interrupted. “I’d rather not hear you

accuse him of such things. I prefer——”

“Good gracious!” Mrs. Dodge exclaimed. “I can’t see why you’re so

sensitive about him when you deliberately broke an engagement with him

this very afternoon without a word of explanation.”

“That’s an entirely different matter,” Lily said, primly. “I _had_ to do

that.”

“Why did you?”

“Because I couldn’t go with one of ’em without hurting both the others

terribly.”

“But why didn’t you make some excuse?”

“Because I couldn’t think of anything I was sure would be satisfactory,

or that they mightn’t find out,” Lily explained, seriously; and she

added, “I had to put that _off_.”

“Until when?”

“Until I get time to think it out, Mamma. So you see it didn’t mean I

care any less for Price. It only meant I was in a perplexing position.”

She rose, facing her mother gravely. “I like him much better than the

others, Mamma, and I don’t think it’s considerate of you to speak so

unkindly of him.” Here Lily’s lip began to tremble a little. “I think he

talks wonderfully, and it’s every word true about Mexico, and I think

you and Papa ought to respect my feeling for him.”

“Your father?” Mrs. Dodge cried. “You know perfectly well what your

father thinks of him.”

But Lily ignored this interpolation, and continued, “It seems to me it

was very unkind of you to sit there just coldly criticizing him in your

mind all afternoon when he was doing his best to entertain you. He meant

nothing except kindness to _you_, and you were sitting there all the

time coldly crit——”

“Yes, I was,” her mother interrupted. “I was certainly sitting there!

But I wasn’t coldly criticizing him in my mind; you’re wrong about that.

After two hours of it, my mental criticism was getting pretty warm,

Lily. In fact, I think it would have scorched me if I hadn’t finally got

rid of him.”

“Got rid of him?” Lily repeated, slowly. “Mamma—you—you weren’t——”

She left the sentence eloquently unfinished.

“Certainly I wasn’t rude to him,” Mrs. Dodge returned, sharply. “I

showed him the patience of an angel as long as I could, and then I

merely mentioned something I wish I’d thought of long before; and he

picked up his plush hat and yellow gloves and went home.”

“That’s as unjust as everything else you say of him. It isn’t plush;

it’s velours,” Lily said. Then she asked ominously: “Mamma, what was it

you merely mentioned?”

“I told him it was getting to be about your father’s usual time of

returning for dinner; that was all.”

“_All!_” Lily cried. “When you _knew_ that Papa wrote him to stop coming

here, and Price never does come any more when Papa’s here.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Dodge said, grimly. “I’ll admit he’s that sensitive! Your

father’s letter was courteous—but clear.”

“Courteous!” Lily echoed, and she became tragically rigid. She breathed

visibly; her eyes were luminous with suffering and indignation; her

sweet and searching little silver carillon of a voice became tremulous

and loud. “It was unspeakable! I never knew Papa had such brutality in

him. And _you_—I thought you were my friend, Mamma; but now I _see_

what you did this afternoon! Price told you the story of his life

because he was _defending_ himself; he was trying to make you understand

him. And all the while he was trying to, you sat there coldly critical,

and then insulted him by telling him Papa might come in. You did, Mamma!

You did! That’s just what it amounted to.”

“You consider it’s an insult to a young man to tell him that your father

may be arriving home presently?”

“Under the circumstances,” Lily returned, bitterly, and quite correctly,

“it certainly was a deadly insult. And you say he isn’t sensitive!

Nobody understands how sensitive he is! And to think he has to undergo

such humiliations for me—all for me!” With that, becoming every moment

more emotionally dramatic, Lily turned to a silver-framed photograph

upon her desk, and addressed it, extending her arms to it in piteous

appeal. “Oh!” she cried, “when I think of all you have to go through for

my sake—for _me_——”

“Lily!” her mother shouted. “Stop it! Stop that nonsense this instant.

Good heavens! your father and I both thought you were getting over it.

We thought you’d begun to see the truth about Price Gleason for

yourself. What on earth has started you all _up_ again?”

This was a singular question for Mrs. Dodge to be asking, since she

herself was the origin of the renewal she thus lamented. Lily had indeed

begun to question her own feeling for the romantic Gleason, as she had

confessed to Ada within that very hour. Moreover, there had crept upon

her lately some faint and secret little shadows of doubt in regard to

the tale of Mexican slaughter and other tremendous narratives included

by this new Othello as elements of his wooing. Left to herself, Lily

might have found her doubt increasing; but her mother had changed all

that in a few minutes.

Mrs. Dodge believed she had been accurately describing an unpleasantly

absurd and erratic young egoist who had trespassed upon her time, her

patience, and her credulity until she at last thought of a fortunate

device to get rid of him; but this was not the picture she had painted

upon her daughter’s mind. What Mrs. Dodge really made Lily see was a

darkly handsome poet adventurer, eloquently telling the story of his

life, not to a stirred Desdemona such as she herself had been, but to a

cynical matron who sat in frosty judgment, disbelieving him, and then

put humiliation upon him. Lily’s pale doubts of him vanished; Mrs. Dodge

had made her his champion, with all ardours renewed.

Moreover, no one in the throes of a championing emotion likes to be

asked, “What on earth has started you all _up_ again?” Perhaps Lily

resented this most of all, for the expression taken by her resentment

was the one best calculated to dismay the questioner. “I’m not precisely

‘started _up_’ again, if you please, Mamma,” she said, suddenly icy, as

she turned from the photograph. “It is time you and Papa both understood

clearly. I have never stopped caring for Price. I have never cared for

any one else.” And, having heard herself say it, she straightway

believed it.

Mrs. Dodge uttered a dismal cry. “Oh, murder!” she said. “We’ve got it

_all_ to go through again!”

“You cannot change me,” Lily informed her. “Nothing you could possibly

say will ever change me.”

“But you know what he is!” Mrs. Dodge wailed, despairingly. “Your own

father says there isn’t a word of truth in his whole body, and besides

that, didn’t he inherit four thousand dollars from his great-aunt and

spend almost every cent of it the day after he got it on an automobile,

and then smash the automobile to pieces after a very wild party? You

know he did, Lily! He’s irresponsible and he’s dissipated, too;

everybody knows he is; and that’s why Mr. Corey didn’t want him to come

to _their_ house any more than your father wants him to come to ours. He

was interested in Ada Corey before he began to come to see you, Lily.”

“I know all about it,” Lily said with dignity. “He told me, of course,

that he’d had a friendship with Ada; and so did she. But Mr. Corey

behaved so outrageously to him, they both thought it would be better to

give it up.”

“Ada’s father and mother saw what that young man is, Lily,” Mrs. Dodge

said, gravely. “They told Ada it was their wish that she shouldn’t

receive him or encourage him in any way; and she listened to them and

saw that they were right, and she obeyed them, Lily.”

“Yes,” said Lily;—“she’s that sort of a girl. I’m not, Mamma.”

Mrs. Dodge’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. “I know you’re not,” she

said, simply, out of much experience.

But at this Lily threw her arms about her. “Mamma!” she cried. “I wish I

_could_ be like Ada! I know how I trouble you, and I’d give anything to

be a steady, philosophical, obedient, comfortable daughter! Oh, I _do_

wish I could!”

“Then why can’t you do as she did about this young man, dear? Why can’t

you see the truth about him as everybody else sees it? There aren’t any

fathers and mothers of girls in the whole place that don’t feel the same

way about him. He may seem fascinating to a few susceptible girls who

haven’t any experience, but he’s just a bad sort of joke to everyone

else. Why can’t you be as sensible as——”

But the moment of melting had passed. When her mother spoke of young Mr.

Gleason as just a bad sort of joke, Lily stepped away from her,

trembling. “Mamma,” she said, “I wish you never to speak of him to me

again until you have learned to respect both him and myself.”

Mrs. Dodge stared helplessly; then, hearing her husband closing the

front door downstairs, she made gestures as of wringing her hands, but

said nothing, and went down to relieve herself by agitating Mr. Dodge

with the painful narrative.

XIX

PARENTS IN DARKNESS

UPON its conclusion, he went so far as to pace the floor of the library,

and make what his wife called an attack upon herself.

“I’ve done everything anybody could,” she protested in defence. “How

could _I_ help it if he _has_ been here a few times when you weren’t in

the house? It’s all very simple for _you_! You merely write him a letter

and then sit in your office, miles away, and expect me to do the rest!

You don’t have to go through the scenes with Lily when it comes to

keeping him out. I believe it would be better, instead of making an

attack on your wife, if you’d put your mind on what’s to be done about

it.”

He shook his head gloomily. “I’m not so sure it was wise to write him

that letter. I’m not sure we haven’t been mistaken in our whole policy

with Lily.”

“Well, you’ve always overruled me,” Mrs. Dodge returned, defensively.

“What mistake do you think you’ve made?”

“I think we’ve probably been wrong from the start,” he said. “Looking

back over all our struggles with Lily, it’s begun to seem to me that we

never once accomplished anything whatever by opposing her.”

“What! Don’t you realize that she’s still a child, and that children

have to be opposed for their own good?”

“Not when they’re nineteen, and it’s opposition about their love affairs

or their friendships,” he returned, frowning; and he continued to walk

up and down the room, his hands clasped behind him. “I mean open

opposition, of course. I’ve begun to believe it never does the slightest

good.”

“Why doesn’t it?” she asked, challengingly. “Are mothers and fathers

supposed to sit aside with folded hands and calmly watch their children

ruin their lives?”

He shook his head again, and sighed. “Sometimes it seems to me that

fathers and mothers might just as well do that very thing. Certainly you

and I could have saved ourselves a great waste of voice and

gesticulation ever since Lily’s babyhood if we’d never opposed her. And

so far as I can see, results would have been just the same. Suppose we

go on struggling with her about this Gleason nuisance; trying to keep

him away from her, arguing with her, and all the rest of it. Will it

change her in the slightest? Will it do any good to anybody?”

“You mean to say that we have no effect whatever upon our own child?”

“No,” he answered. “We _might_ have an effect. That’s just what I’m

afraid of.”

“You mean we shouldn’t keep on telling Lily the _truth_ about Price

Gleason?” his wife cried, incredulously.

“Yes; I’ve almost come to that conclusion. It doesn’t seem to her to be

the truth about him when we tell it. She only sees it as an attack on

him. We spoil our own cause by making her his defender, and a defender

can’t help idealizing what he defends. I’ve come to believe that’s where

we parents make a lot of our worst mistakes—we’re always throwing our

children into the camp of our enemies. And in particular, when a girl is

showing signs of being in love with a worthless young _poseur_, like

this Gleason, I believe that all our denouncing and arguing and bossing

only puts a glamour about the fellow in the girl’s eyes, and makes her

more certain she’s in love with him and wants to marry him.”

“Why, no,” Mrs. Dodge returned, triumphantly demolishing him at a

stroke. “Look at Ada Corey. Her father and mother told her the truth

about Price Gleason and declined to let her see him. That was enough for

Ada. She just quietly gave him up.”

“I know—I know,” Mr. Dodge admitted; but clung to his point. “Ada isn’t

like most girls of her age. I understand her, because she’s sensible,

and I _don’t_ understand most of ’em—particularly my own daughter; but

I’ve grown pretty sure of one thing and that is this: If we want to

throw Lily into this bounder’s arms, we’ll keep on telling her the truth

about him. Our one chance is to let her alone and see if she won’t find

it out for herself.”

“In other words, you intend to revoke our whole policy toward him?”

“In a manner, yes, I believe we should,” Mr. Dodge admitted. “I don’t go

so far as to say I mean to tell Lily I consent to his coming to the

house again; but I propose that we stop mentioning him at all in her

presence, and that if she speaks of him we say nothing in dispraise of

him. That is, from now on we’re no longer actively and openly opposing

her; and if you’re going with her to that country club affair to-morrow

night, and he’s there, I suggest that you do and say nothing to make her

think you object to her being with him. Let her dance with him all she

wants.”

“It won’t work,” Lily’s mother predicted ominously. “Ada Corey’s father

took the right course; he simply put his foot down and that ended the

matter. Why can’t you do as Mr. Corey did?”

Mr. Dodge uttered sounds of rueful laughter. “I’ve put my foot down with

Lily so many times I’ve worn the sole off my shoe. Remember, too, it’s

not so long ago since she cured herself of another infatuation because

you thought it would be better for us to withdraw our opposition.”

“That was utterly different, and the whole Osborne affair was a mere

childish absurdity. Lily’s older now, and you’re proposing a terribly

dangerous thing.”

“Nevertheless, let’s try it. What else _can_ we do but try it?”

“I suppose we’ve got to, since you’ve made up your mind,” his wife said,

stubbornly. “But I consent to it under protest. She’s absolutely

infatuated, and we’re throwing her straight in his arms. You’ll see!”

This tragic prophecy of hers was in a fair way to be fulfilled almost

immediately, she thought, the next evening, as she sat in the little

gallery of the Blue Hills Country Club ballroom and looked down upon the

dancers. The radiant Lily danced again and again with the picturesque

Gleason; and her posture, as they moved gracefully together, was

significant—her vivid, delicate face was always uplifted, so that her

happy eyes, sweetly confident, seemed continuously engaged with pretty

messages to her partner. The poetically handsome Price, on his part,

bent his dark head above her ardently; and a stranger would have guessed

them at first sight to be a pair newly betrothed. In fact, Mrs. Dodge

was disquieted by much such a guess of her own, and her heart sank as

she watched them. Moreover, while her heart sank, her indignation rose.

This, then, was the result of Mr. Dodge’s new policy! And she wished

that he had been beside her to see its result—and to hear her opinion

of it!

Her guess, however, like that of the supposititious stranger, was not

quite accurate. Lily was not engaged to Mr. Gleason—not “absolutely”

so, to report her own feeling in the matter. But she would have admitted

being “almost”—almost engaged—that night. The Mexican hero had never

definitely proposed marriage, any more than she had felt herself

prepared for a definite consent to such a proposal; but his every

persuasive word and look and all her own reciprocal coquetry pointed to

that end. And as the evening continued and they danced and danced

together, murmuring little piquancies to each other meanwhile, the

haziness implied in “almost” seemed more and more on the point of being

dispersed. Lily preferred that it be not quite; but her partner was

“wonderful” to look up to, and to listen to as she looked. He had warmly

appreciative dark eyes and a stirring mellow voice; and he danced, if

not like a Mordkin, then at least like a Valentino, which may sometimes

be preferable. All in all, she might have been swept away if he had

pressed the sweeping.

She was the happier because he did not—the indefinite “almost” was so

much pleasanter and more exciting—and she had what she defined as a

simply magnificent time. Now and then she knew, in an untroubled, hazy

way, that a mute doomfulness hovered above her in the gallery; but she

felt that her mother was behaving excellently—most surprisingly,

too—in not interfering at all. The one thing to bother Lily—and that

only a little, and because it puzzled her—came at the very end of the

evening. It was something her friend Ada said to her as they were alone

together in the corner of a cloakroom, preparing to go home after the

last dance.

XX

DAMSEL DARK, DAMSEL FAIR

“DIDN’T I tell you that you could get away with anything?” Ada said.

“Weren’t all three of ’em just as wild about you to-night as if you

hadn’t done it?”

“Done what?”

“Skipped out to walk with me and didn’t leave any word behind, when

you’d made engagements with all of ’em.” And then, as Lily’s flushed and

happy face showed a complete vagueness upon the matter, Ada exclaimed,

“Good gracious! Yesterday!”

Lily remembered, but as one remembers things of long ago. “Oh, that?”

she said, dreamily. “It wasn’t anything.”

Ada looked at her sharply and oddly; and Lily afterward recalled the

strangeness of this look. Ada’s eyes, usually placid, were wide and

lustrous; her colour was high, and she seemed excited. “Have you done

anything to get out of being practically almost engaged to any of them?”

she whispered, leaning close. “If you haven’t, you don’t need to worry

anyhow, Lily.”

She spoke hurriedly, all in a breath, then kissed Lily’s cheek quickly

and whispered, “I’m sorry!” She ran out into the crowded hallway,

drawing her cloak about her as she ran.

“Why, what in the world——” Lily began, but Ada was already out of

hearing, and disappeared immediately among the homeward-bound dancers

near the outer doors. Lily followed, but could catch not even a glimpse

of her, though she found an opportunity to say good-night—again—to Mr.

Gleason, who was departing.

“Good-night, but never good-bye, I hope,” he said, with a fervour

somewhat preoccupied. “You’ve been _beautiful_ to me. I hope you’ll

always be my friend.” And with the air of a person pressed for time, he

touched her hand briefly and passed on. Lily attributed his haste to the

approach of her mother, who was ponderously bearing down upon them; but

this interpretation may have been a mistaken one. Mr. Gleason had much

on his mind at the moment, and Mrs. Dodge carefully withheld herself

from joining her daughter until he had gone.

. . . Mr. Dodge had not retired to bed; he was smoking in the library

when the two ladies of his household returned from their merrymaking.

Lily kissed him enthusiastically, while his wife stood by, pure granite.

“You’ve had a jolly evening, Lily?”

“Beautiful!” she said. “Oh, simply magnificent!” And she ran upstairs to

bed.

That is to say, she was on her way to bed, and she ran up the stairs as

far as the landing; but there she paused. The acoustic properties of the

house were excellent, and from the stairway landing one could hear

perfectly what was said in the library when the library door was open.

What stopped Lily was the bitter conviction in her mother’s voice.

“Do you see?” Mrs. Dodge demanded. “Do you see what you’re _doing_? It’s

just as I told you it would be. Absolutely!”

“Oh, no!” he protested. “This much isn’t a fair trial. You haven’t given

it a chance.”

“Haven’t I?” Mrs. Dodge laughed satirically. “It’s had chance enough to

show where it’s certain to end. Don’t you see that for yourself?”

“No. What makes you think I should?”

“I’ll tell you.” But before going on to relate her impressions of the

evening, Mrs. Dodge had a deterrent thought. She stood silent a moment,

then went to the door and called softly upward, “Lily?”

“Yes, Mamma. I’m just going up to bed,” Lily said, diplomatically, and

proceeded upon her way as her mother closed the library door.

Lily wondered if they were talking about her, though she was unable to

see how giving something a fair trial could have anything to do with

her. She could no longer hear the words her parents were uttering,

though the sound of their voices still came to her in the upper hall,

and it was evident that they were beginning a spirited discussion. Her

father’s voice sounded protestive, her mother’s denunciatory, and Lily

decided that they probably weren’t talking about her at all. She was in

high spirits and laughed to herself over their earnestness—older people

got excited and argued so over such dull matters, she thought. It would

be a terrible thing ever to get middle-aged like that!

She never would be like that, she said to herself as she undressed.

Never! Such a thing couldn’t happen. “To be like Mamma and not care much

what you wear, or anything, and with a good dry old husband at home—and

all so dusty and musty and _settled_—and not able to _look_ at another

man—I could never in the world be like that! Ada Corey could, but I

couldn’t. I’d a thousand times rather die!”

And with the thought of Ada she remembered Ada’s rather enigmatic

remarks to her in the cloakroom and the queer look Ada had given her.

The recollection of that oddly sharp look disturbed her, and, when she

had gone to bed, kept her awhile from sleeping. There had been something

appealing in that look, too, something excitedly reticent, as of strange

knowledge withheld, and yet something humble and questing. And what in

the world had she meant by saying, “I’m sorry!” as she ran out of the

room.

Lily had to give it up, at least for that night, but she made up her

mind to call Ada on the telephone early in the morning and reproach her

for keeping people awake by suddenly becoming mysterious. Of course,

though, the explanation would be simple, and the mystery would turn out

to be nothing of any importance. Ada never knew any exciting secrets and

probably hadn’t intended to be mysterious at all. Having come to this

conclusion, Lily let her thoughts go where they wanted to go, though

they were not so much thoughts as pictures and dreamy echoes of

sounds—pictures of dark and tender eyes bent devotedly upon hers,

dreamy echoes of a mellow voice murmuring fond things to the lilting

accompaniment of far-away dance music. So, finally, she slept, and slept

smiling.

A coloured maid tapped at her door in the morning, and, being bidden to

enter, came in and brought to Lily’s bedside a note addressed in Ada’s

hand.

“Must been lef’ here in the night-time, Miss Lily, or else awful early

this morn’. It was stickin’ under the front door when I went to bring in

the newspaper.”

Lily read the note.

It was the only thing we could do, Lily, to keep my people from

guessing what was really going on. We didn’t mean to let it go

on so long, but we had to wait until we could save up enough to

start with. Of course, I know everybody will say I’m hopelessly

mad and reckless, and my family will be terribly upset. I _told_

you I wished I were like you. If it were you, you could get away

with a thing like this and after a day or so nobody would think

anything about it, but I know how awful and different it will

seem to everybody because _I’m_ the one that does it!

I’m glad you told me it didn’t really mean anything serious to

you—I was sure it wouldn’t. I hope you won’t feel I ought to

have given you my confidence, and I _would_ have given it if it

hadn’t been such a serious matter. Besides, the real truth is,

Lily, our whole friendship seemed to be centred on your affairs

and you, never on me or mine. You were so interested in the

confidences you made to me, you never even seemed to think I had

any to make of my own and you never invited any. Please don’t

take this for criticism—and _please_ wish me happiness!

Lily dressed hurriedly; Ada had indeed mystified and disturbed her now;

and she was eager to get to the telephone downstairs and find out what

in the world this strange communication portended. But as she passed the

dining-room door on her way to the little telephone table in the hall,

her mother called to her. Mr. and Mrs. Dodge were at breakfast.

“Not now, Mamma. I’ll come in a moment. I want to telephone to Ada

first.”

“Lily,” her father said, urgently, “I wouldn’t.”

His tone arrested her, and she paused near the doorway.

“You wouldn’t telephone to Ada?” she asked, nervously. “Why wouldn’t

you?”

“Ada’s not there,” he said, gravely. “Come here, Lily.”

She came in slowly, looking at him with an appealing apprehension; and

his own look, in return, was compassionate. He held a morning paper in

his hand, and moved as if to offer it to her, then withheld it. “Wait,”

he said. “Your mother and I both think her family have behaved

foolishly. If they’d shown a little more discretion—but she’s the sort

of girl nobody’d have dreamed would be up to this sort of thing, and I

suppose they must have been terribly upset. Of course, they might have

known the papers would get it, though, when they began calling up the

police to look for her and stop the——”

“Police!” Lily gasped. “Papa! What are you _talking_ about?”

“Ada Corey,” he said. “She never came home from the dance last night.

She’s run away with that crazy young Price Gleason. They eloped from the

Country Club, and the paper says they were married at a village squire’s

office about an hour afterward.”

With that, not looking at her, but at his plate, he offered her the

newspaper. Lily did not take it. She stared at it, wholly incredulous;

then she reddened with sudden high colour, and, remembering Ada’s queer

look of last night, needed not even the confirmation of the queerer

letter just read to understand that the thing was true.

She said nothing, but after a moment went to her chair at the table,

and, although he did not look at her, Mr. Dodge had a relieved

impression that she was about to sit down and eat her breakfast in a

customary manner. Then his wife rose suddenly and moved as if to go to

her.

“Let me _alone_!” Lily gasped. She ran out of the door and up to her own

room.

She felt that she could not live. No one _could_ live, she thought, and

bear such agony. The dimensions of her anger, too great to be contained,

were what agonized her.

“To think of their daring to make me a mere blind!” she cried out to her

mother, when Mrs. Dodge followed her. “To think they _dared_! It’s the

treachery of it—the _insolence_ of it! I can’t _live_ and be made a

mere blind! I _can’t_, Mamma!”

XXI

MRS. CROMWELL’S NIECE

IN THE meantime, touching these mothers and daughters, there was a

figure not thus far appeared among them, yet destined to be for a while

their principal topic and interest. She was, indeed, at this time, a

lonely figure, a niece of Mrs. Cromwell’s but not well known to her and

living a day’s rail journey to the westward. On the November day of Lily

Dodge’s agony this niece of Mrs. Cromwell’s was as agonized as Lily.

Each thought herself the unhappiest soul in the world, and yet, with

greater wisdom, each might have known that no girl can ever think

herself the unhappiest but that, at the same time, other

girls—somewhere—will be thinking the same thing and suffering as

sadly. The lonely niece’s tragedy was as dark as Lily’s, but came about

in a different way.

The group of girls who had happened to meet at the corner of Maple

Street and Central Avenue that morning was like the groups their mothers

had sometimes formed, years before, on the same corner. This is to say,

it was not unlike any other group of young but marriageable maidens

pausing together by chance at a corner in the “best residence section”

of a town of forty or fifty thousand inhabitants, anywhere in the land.

Three of these seven girls were on their way homeward from ‘downtown’;

three were strolling in the opposite direction; and the seventh, seeing

the two parties meet and begin their chatter with loud outcries, had

come hurrying from a quiet old house near by to join them. The six made

a great commotion. Their laughter whooped on the whirling autumn wind

that flapped their skirts about them; their gesturing hands fluttered

like the last leaves of the agitated shade trees above them; their

simultaneous struggles for a hearing, shattering the peace of the

comfortable neighbourhood, were not incomparable to the disorderly

uproar of a box of fireworks prematurely exploding on the third of July.

The seventh girl, who had come across the lawn of the quiet old house on

the corner to join them, also shouted, begging to be told the cause of

so much vociferation.

“What’s happened? What on earth’s the matter?” she cried, going from one

to another of the clamorous damsels and trying to make herself heard.

“What is it? What’s going on? What’s it all _about_?”

One or two took cognizance of her with a nod and a hasty greeting,

“Hello, Elsie,” but found no more time for her; and the rest paid no

attention whatever to her or to her eager inquiries. They were too busy

shouting, “But listen, my dear!” or “I never in all my _life_!” or “My

dear, you never _saw_ anything like it!” though the smallest of them, a

pretty brunette with the most piercing voice of all, did at last begin

an explanatory response to the repeated entreaties of this Elsie. “Paul

Reamer said——” But, as if realizing the waste of so much energy upon a

person unconcerned in the matter, she immediately turned to the others,

shrieking, “_Listen!_ For Heaven’s sake, _listen_! He said he’d be along

before we got halfway _home_! He said——”

Then even the small brunette’s remarkable voice was merged in the

conglomerate disturbance, and Elsie was no wiser than before. She

continued to go from one girl to another, shouting, “What _about_ Paul

Reamer? What’s he _done_? What _about_ him?” But for all the response

she got she might have been both invisible and inaudible.

The uproar the six girls were making had no coherence; it accomplished

nothing; it was merely a happy noise; and yet it seemed to be about

something that concerned the six and was understood by them—something

that had nothing to do with the seventh girl and could not be understood

by her. The six were not hostile to her; they were merely unaware of

her, or, at least, in their excitement, too dimly aware of her to pay

any heed to her.

So, presently, she gave over her efforts and stood silent, a little

apart from the shouting group and smiling; but her smiling was only an

expression of hers, not a true token of feeling within. She wished to go

on making her share of the noise; but a persistently disregarded

questioner must always become at last a mere onlooker. Thus, Elsie found

herself excluded from the merriment she had come to join; and she felt

obliged to maintain a lively and knowing look upon her face, so that

passers-by might not think her an outsider, for she did not know how to

go away with any grace or comfort. Excluded, she could only stand near

the congenial, vociferous six and try to look included—a strain upon

her facial expression. The strain became painful as she still lingered

and the merry group grew merrier; but what pained her more was her

regret that she had rushed out so hopefully to meet an exclusion she

should have known enough to expect.

She might have known enough to expect it because this was an old

familiar experience of hers, an experience so much worse than customary

that it was invariable. And another familiar old experience, or phase of

this one, was repeated as she stood there, smiling and somewhat glassily

beaming, trying to look knowing and included.

From down the street there came swiftly into nearer view an open touring

car, driven by a slender young gentleman of a darkly handsome yet

sprightly aspect; and upon this the six clamoured far beyond all

clamours they had made before. The debonair motorist steered his machine

to the curb, close to them, jumped out, was surrounded by the

vociferators, and added his own cheerful shoutings to theirs.

What they all meant to convey was for the most part as unknown to Elsie

Hemingway as if they gabbled Arabic, though the name “Paul” was

prevalent over the tumult, amidst which the owner of it was seized by

his coat lapels, his shoulders, even by his chin, and entreated to

“listen!” Finally, however, some sort of coherent communication seemed

to be established among them, and the young man emerged from the group,

though the small girl with the piercing voice still clung to one of his

coat pockets. “Call up Fred!” she screamed. “Tell him we won’t wait one

instant!”

He detached himself. “Elsie, can I use your telephone?” he asked, but

evidently regarded the question as unimportant, for he was already upon

his way and did not pause.

“Oh, _do_!” she cried, enthusiastically, glad to seem a part of the

mystery at last, and she turned to go with him. “Do you want to call up

Fred Patterson to bring his car? Are you getting up a party, Paul?

What’s the——”

He had rushed ahead of her and was at the open front door of the house.

“Where do you keep it?” he called back to her.

“Wait! It’s in the back hall. Wait till I show you,” she cried; but he

ran into the house, found the telephone, and was busy with it before she

reached him.

“Did you get Fred’s number?” she asked, eagerly.

He was smiling and his eyes were bright with anticipations that seemed

to concern not Elsie but the instrument before him. He did not look at

her or seem even to hear her, but moved the nickeled prong up and down

impatiently.

“Can’t you get him?” Elsie inquired, and she laughed loudly. Her air was

that of a person secretly engaged with another upon a jocular enterprise

bound to afford great entertainment. “Old Fred _is_ the slowest old

poke, isn’t he? Suppose _I_ try, Paul.”

Young Mr. Reamer’s eyes wandered to her and lost their lustre, becoming

dead with absent-mindedness immediately. He said nothing.

“Let me try to get that funny old Fred,” Elsie urged in the same eager

voice; and she stretched forth a hand for the instrument.

Upon this he moved his shoulder in her way, turning from her, and at the

same time a small voice crackled in the telephone. Mr. Reamer’s

brightness of expression returned instantly. “You bet it’s me!” he said.

“And if you don’t hurry up here in that old tin boat of yours, you’re

going to get killed! The whole gang’s out here on the curbstone, simply

raving, right in front of Elsie Hemingway’s.”

“I believe it _is_ Fred!” Elsie exclaimed. “I believe you’ve got him

after all. Does he say——”

“You better hurry!” the young man said to the mouthpiece as he dropped

the receiver into its hook. Then, as he turned toward the door, he

seemed to become conscious, though vaguely, that he was not alone. “Much

’bliged, Elsie,” he said. “Goo’bye!”

“Wait. Wait just a minute, Paul.”

“What for?”

“Fred isn’t on his way yet, I don’t suppose,” she said, timidly.

“Let’s—let’s wait in Papa’s library till he comes. There are some

pretty interesting books in there I’d like to show you. Papa’s great on

bindings and old editions. Wouldn’t you like to see some of ’em?”

“Well, another day maybe,” he answered, obviously surprised. “You see

Mamie Ford and all the girls are out there, and I——”

“Wait,” she begged, for he was in motion to depart. “Aren’t you ever

coming to see me again, Paul?”

“What?” He appeared to have no comprehension of her meaning.

“Aren’t you ever coming to see me again?” She laughed lightly, yet there

was a tremor in her voice. “I don’t believe you’ve been in our house for

over two years, Paul.”

“Oh, yes, I have,” he returned. “I must have been here a whole lot in

that much time. G’bye, Elsie; the girls are——”

But again she contrived to detain him. “Wait. When will you come to see

me again, Paul?”

“Oh, almost any time.”

“But when? What day?”

This urgency, though gentle, bothered him, and he wished he hadn’t

thought of using Elsie’s telephone. He was a youth much sought, as he

had reason to be pleasantly aware, and life offered him many more

interesting vistas than the prospect of an afternoon or an evening or a

substantial part of either, to be spent tête-à-tête with Elsie

Hemingway. Pressed to give a definite reason why such a prospect

dismayed him, he might have been puzzled. Elsie wasn’t exactly a bore;

she wasn’t bad-looking, and nobody disliked her. Probably he would have

fallen back upon an explanation that would have been satisfactory enough

to most of the young people with whom he and Elsie had “grown up.” Elsie

was “just Elsie Hemingway,” he would have said, implying an otherwise

unexplainable something inherent in Elsie herself, and nothing

derogatory to the Hemingway family.

“_When_ will you come, Paul?”

“Why—why, right soon, Elsie. Honestly I will. I’ll try to, that is.

Honestly I’ll——”

“Paul, it’s true you haven’t been here in over two years.” Elsie’s voice

trembled a little more perceptibly. “The last time you were here was

when you came to Mother’s funeral. You had to come then, because you had

to bring your mother.”

“Oh, no,” he said, a little shocked at this strange reference. “I was

gl—— I mean I wanted to come. I’ll come again, too, some day, before

long. I must run, Elsie. The girls——”

“You won’t say when?” She spoke gravely, looking at him steadily, and

there was more in her eyes than he saw, for he was not interested in

finding what was there, or in anything except in his escape to the

gaiety outdoors.

He laughed reassuringly. “Oh, sometime before very long. I’ll honestly

try to get ’round. Honestly, I will, Elsie. Listen!”

There were shriekings of his name from the street and lawn. “G’bye! I’m

coming!” he shouted, and dashed out of the house to meet the vehement

demand for him. He was asked at the top of several voices “what on

earth” he’d been doing all that time; but no one even jocularly

suggested Elsie as a cause of his delay.

When he had gone, she went to the front door and closed it, keeping

herself out of sight; then she stood looking through the lace curtain

that covered the glass set into the upper half of the door. The amiable

youth she had called “old Fred,” accompanied by a male comrade, was just

arriving in a low car wherein they reclined almost at full length rather

than sat. The small but piercing Miss Ford leaped to join them, and the

other girls, screaming, each trying to make her laughter dominant, piled

themselves into Paul Reamer’s car. Both machines trembled into motion at

once, and swept away, carrying a great noise with them up the echoing

street.

Elsie stood for a little while looking heavily out at nothing; then she

went slowly up the old, carpeted stairway to her own room, where she did

a singular thing. She took a hand mirror from her dressing-table, looked

searchingly into the glass for several long and solemn minutes, then

dropped down upon her bed and wept. She might have been a beauty

discovering the first gray hair.

It was strange that she should look into a mirror and then weep because,

if the glass was honest with her, its revelation should have been in

every detail encouraging. The reflection showed lamenting gray eyes, but

long-lashed and vividly lustrous; it showed a good white brow and a neat

nose and a shapely mouth and chin. No one could have asked a mirror to

be coloured a pleasanter tan brown than where it reflected Elsie’s

rippling hair; and as for the rest of her, she was neither angular nor

awkward, neither stout nor misshapen in any way, but the contrary. Yet

this was not the first time she had done that strange thing;—she had

come too often silently to her room, looked into her mirror, and then

fallen to long weeping.

XXII

WALLFLOWER

THE FIRST time she had done it she was only twelve; but even then her

reason for it was the same. At the end of a children’s party she

realized that she had been miserable, and that she was never anything

except miserable at parties. She always looked forward to them; always

thought for days about what she would wear; always set forth in a tremor

of excitement; and then, when she was there, and the party in full

swing, she spent the time being wretched and trying to look happy, so

that no one would guess what she felt. She had always the same

experience: in the games the children played, if two leaders chose

“sides,” she was the last to be chosen, except when she was ignored and

left out altogether, which sometimes happened. When they danced she

usually had no partners except upon the urgency of mothers or

hostesses;—the boys rushed to all the other girls and came lagging to

Elsie only in duty or in desperation. So at last, being twelve, she

realized what had been happening to her—and came home to look secretly

into her mirror and then to weep.

As she grew older, and her group with her, nothing changed; she was a

wallflower. The other girls were all busy with important little

appointments—“dates” they called them—Elsie had none. With the

liveliest eagerness the others talked patteringly about things that were

meaningless to her; and when she tried to talk that way, too, she failed

shamefully. She tried to laugh with them, and as loudly as they did,

when she had no idea what they were laughing about; and for a long time

she failed to understand that usually they were laughing about nothing.

On summer evenings the boys and girls clustered on other verandas, not

hers; and, sitting alone, she would hear the distant frolicking and

drifts of song. At dances for her sixteen and seventeen-year-old

contemporaries, everything was as it had been when she was twelve. Even

when her mother, guessing a little of the truth, tried to help her, and,

in spite of failing health, worked hard at “entertaining” for Elsie, the

entertaining failed of its object;—Elsie was not made “popular.”

“_Why_ not?” she had passionately asked herself a thousand times. “_Why_

do they despise me so?”

Yet she knew that they did not even despise her. At times they did

despise one of their group, usually a girl; for it seems to be almost a

necessity, in an intimate circle of young people, that from time to time

there shall be a member whom the rest may privately denounce, and in

gatherings vent their wit upon more or less openly.

During the greater part of her seventeenth year the dashing Mamie Ford

had been in this unfortunate position without any obvious cause. The

others were constantly busy “talking” about her, finding new faults or

absurdities in her; snubbing her and playing derisive practical jokes

upon her—for it is true that youth is cruel; self-interest takes up so

much room. Elsie envied her, for at least Mamie was in the thick of

things; and the centre of the stew. That was better than being a mere

left-outer, Elsie thought; and Mamie fought, too, and had her own small

faction, whereas a left-outer has nothing to fight except the vacancy in

which she dwells—a dreary battling. Mamie’s unpopularity passed, for no

better reason than it had arrived;—she was now, at nineteen, the very

queen of the roost, and Elsie, wondering why, could only conclude that

it was because Mamie made so much noise.

Elsie had long ago perceived that, of the girls she knew, those who made

the loudest and most frequent noises signifying excitement and hilarity

were the ones about whom the boys and, consequently, the other girls,

most busily grouped themselves. Naturally, the simple males went where

vivacious sound and gesture promised merriment; and of course, too, a

crowd naturally gathers where something seems to be happening. So far as

Elsie could see, the whole art of general social intercourse seemed to

rest on an ability to make something appear to be happening where

nothing really was happening.

What had always most perplexed her was that the proper method of doing

this seemed to be the simplest thing in the world, and was,

nevertheless, in her own hands an invariable failure. She had watched

Mamie Ford at dances and at dinners where Mamie was the life of the

party, and she observed that in addition to shouting over every nothing

and laughing ecstatically without the necessity of being inspired by any

detectable humour, Mamie always offered every possible evidence—flushed

face, sparkling eyes, and unending gesticulations—that she was having a

genuinely uproarious “good time” herself. Elsie had tried it; she had

tried it until her face ached; but she remained only an echo outside the

walls. Nobody paid any attention to her.

Therefore she had no resource but to infer what she had inferred to-day,

when the merry impromptu party whirled away without a thought of

including her, and when Paul Reamer had so carelessly evaded her

urgency—her shameless urgency, as she thought, weeping upon her

coverlet. This inference of hers could be only that she had some

mysterious ugliness, some strange stupidity, and it was this she sought

in her mirror, as she had sought it before. It evaded her as it always

did; but she knew it must be there.

“What is _wrong_ about me?” she murmured, tasting upon her lips the

bitter salt of that inquiry. “They couldn’t always treat me like this

unless there’s _something_ wrong about me.”

She was sure that the wrong thing must be with herself. The Hemingways

were one of the “old families”;—they had always taken a creditable part

in the life of the town, and the last man of them, her father, owned and

edited the principal newspaper of the place. Elsie had no prospect of

riches, but she was not poor; and other girls with less than she were

“popular.” Therefore the wrong thing about her could be identified in

nothing exterior. Moreover, when she pursued her search for the vital

defect she could not attribute it to tactlessness; for that has some

weight, and she was weightless. She danced well, she dressed as well as

any of the girls did, and her father told her that she “talked well,”

too;—he said this to her often, during the long evenings she spent with

him in his library. Yet he was the only one who would listen to her,

and, though she adored him, he was not the audience she most wanted. She

“talked well”; but even by pleading she could not get Paul Reamer to

spend five minutes with her.

No wonder! Paul was the great beau of the town, and she the girl least

of all like a belle. And, remembering his plain consciousness of this

contrast, almost ludicrously expressed in his surprise that she should

try to detain him with her for even a few minutes, she shivered as she

wept. She hated herself for begging of him; she hated herself for having

run out of the house to try for the thousandth time to be one of a

“crowd” that didn’t want her; she hated herself for “hanging around

them,” laughing and pretending that she was one of them, when anybody

could see she wasn’t. She hated herself for having something wrong about

her, and for not being able to find out what it was; she hated herself,

and she hated everything and everybody—except her father.

. . . At dinner that evening he reproached her for being pale. “I don’t

believe you take enough exercise,” he suggested.

“Yes, I do. I took a long walk this afternoon. I walked four or five

miles.”

“Did you?” He smiled under his heavy old-fashioned, gray lambrequin of a

moustache, and his eyeglasses showed a glint of humorous light. “That

doesn’t sound as if you went with a _girl_ companion, Elsie! Four or

five miles, was it?”

“I went alone,” she said, occupied with her plate.

His humorous manifestations vanished and he looked somewhat concerned.

“Is that so? It might have been jollier the other way, perhaps. I

sometimes think I monopolize you too much, young woman. For instance,

you oughtn’t to spend all your evenings with me. You ought to keep up

your contemporary friendships more than you do, I’m afraid. Why don’t

you ask the girls and boys here to play with you sometimes?”

“I don’t want them.”

“Would you like to give a dance—or anything?”

“No, Papa.”

He sighed. “I’m afraid your young friends bore you, Elsie.”

“No,” she said. “It isn’t that exactly. I just——” She left the

sentence unfinished.

“You just don’t take much interest in ’em,” he laughed.

“Well—maybe.” Still occupied with the food before her, though her being

occupied with it meant no hearty consumption of it, she seemed to admit

the charge. “Something like that.”

“It shouldn’t be so,” he said. “From the little I see of ’em I shouldn’t

spot any of ’em for a lofty intellect precisely, but young people of

that sort in a moderate-sized city like this usually do seem to older

people just a pack of incomprehensible gigglers and gabblers. I suppose

you never hear much from ’em except personalities and pretty slim jokes,

and it may get tiresome for a girl as solid on the Napoleonic Period as

you are.” He paused to chuckle. “I don’t suppose you hear much

discussion of Madame de Rémusat among ’em, do you?”

“No.”

“What I’m getting at,” he went on;—“you oughtn’t to think too much

about intellectual fodder or be bored with people your own age because

they can’t offer it.”

At that she glanced wanly at him across the table. “I’m not, Papa. They

don’t bore me.”

“Then I can’t understand your not seeing more of ’em. It isn’t normal,

and you’re missing a lot of the rightful pleasures of youth. It’s

natural for youth to seek youth, and not to devote all its time to an

old codger like me. I believe you need a change.” He looked at her

severely and nodded. “I’m serious.”

“What change?”

“Your aunt Mildred’s written me again about your visiting there,” he

said. “Your cousin Cornelia finished her school last year. Now she’s

home from eight months abroad and they really want you.”

“Oh, no,” Elsie said, quietly, and looked again at her plate.

“Why not?”

“I don’t care to go, Papa.”

“Why don’t you?”

Her lip quivered a little, but she controlled it, and he saw no sign of

emotion. “Because I wouldn’t have a good time.”

“I’d like to know why you wouldn’t,” he returned a little testily. “Your

aunt Mildred is the best sister I had. She’s a pretty fine person,

Elsie, and she’s always wanted to know you better. She says Cornelia’s

turned out to be a lovely young woman, and they both want you to come.

She’s sure you’ll like Cornelia.”

“Maybe I would,” Elsie said, moodily. “That isn’t saying Cornelia’d like

me.”

“Of all the nonsense!” he cried, and he laughed impatiently. “How could

she help liking you? Everybody likes you, of course. Mildred says

Cornelia has a mighty nice circle of young people about her; they have

such jolly times, it’s fun just watching ’em, Mildred says; and she

enjoys entertaining a lot. They have that big house of theirs, and

they’re near enough the city to go in for the theatre when they want to

and——”

“I know,” Elsie interrupted. “They’re great people, and it’s a big,

fashionable suburb and everything’s grand! I’m not dreaming of going,

Papa.”

“Aren’t you? Well, I’m dreaming of making you,” he retorted. “You

haven’t been there since you were a little girl, and your aunt says it’s

shameful to treat her as if she lived in China, when it’s really only a

night or day’s run on a Pullman. They want you to come, and they expect

to give you a real splurge, Elsie.”

“No, no,” she said, quickly; and if he could have seen her downcast eyes

he might have perceived that they were terrified. “Let’s don’t talk of

it, Papa.”

“Let’s do,” he returned, genially. “I suppose you think that because

you’re bored by this little set of young people of yours, here, you’ll

be bored by Cornelia’s friends. I don’t know, but I’d at least guess

that they might be a little more metropolitan, though of course young

people are pretty much the same the world over nowadays.”

“Yes,” Elsie said in a low voice. “I’m sure they would be.”

“More metropolitan, you mean?”

“No,” Elsie said. “I mean they’d be the same as these are here.”

“Well, at least you might give ’em a try. They might prove to be

more——”

“No,” Elsie said again. “They’d be just the same.”

This was the cause of the obstinacy that puzzled and even provoked him

during a week of intermittent arguing upon the matter. Elsie was sure

that one thing he said was only too true: “Young people are pretty much

the same the world over nowadays”; and in her imagination she could

conjure up no picture of herself occupying among her cousin Cornelia

Cromwell’s friends a position different from that she held among her

own. They would be polite to her for the first hour or so, she knew, and

then they would do to her what had always been done to her. They would

treat her as a weightless presence, invisible and inaudible, a

left-outer.

Her aunt and Cornelia would expect much of her; and they would be kind

in their disappointment; but they would have her on their hands and

secretly look forward to the relief of her departure. Elsie could

predict it all, and in sorry imaginings foresee the weariness of her

aunt and cousin as they would daily renew the task of privately goading

reluctant young men and preoccupied girls to appear conscious that she

was a human being, not air. The visit would mean only a new failure, a

new one on a grander scale than the old failure at home. The old one was

enough for her; she was used to it, and the surroundings at least were

familiar. The more her father urged her, the more she was terrified by

what he urged.

“I’ve made up my mind to compel you,” he told her one evening in the

library. “I’m serious, Elsie.”

She did not look up from her book, but responded quietly: “I’m twenty.

Women are of age in this state at eighteen, Papa.”

“Are they? I wrote your aunt yesterday that you’re coming.”

“I wrote her yesterday, too. I told her I couldn’t.”

“No other explanation?”

“Of course I said you needed me to run the house, Papa.”

“I didn’t bring you up to tell untruths,” he said. “You’ve learned, it

seems; but this one won’t do you any good. You’re going, Elsie, and if

you want some new dresses or hats or things you’d better be ordering

’em. You don’t seem to understand I really mean it.”

She dropped her book in her lap and sighed profoundly. “What for?” she

asked. “Why do you make such a point of it?”

“Because I’ve been watching you and thinking about you, and I don’t

believe I’m doing my duty by you. Not as”—his voice showed

feeling—“not as your mother would have me do it. Sometimes you cheer up

and joke with me, but I don’t believe you’re happy.”

“But I _am_.”

“You’re not,” he returned with conviction. “And the reason is, you lead

too monotonous a life. A monotonous life suits elderliness, but it isn’t

normal for youth. Really, you’re getting to lead the life of a recluse,

and I won’t have it. If these provincial young people here bore you so

that you won’t run about and play with them as the other girls do, why

then you’ve got to try a different kind of young people.”

“But you said young people were all the same, Papa, the world over; and

it’s true.”

“At least,” he insisted, “your cousin Cornelia’s will have different

faces, and you’re going to go and look at ’em. Elsie, you’re _not_

having a good time, and one way or another I’ve got to make you. You

need a new view of some kind; you’ve got to be shaken out of this hermit

habit you’ve fallen into.”

“Papa, please,” she said, appealingly. “I don’t want to go. Don’t make

me. Please!”

At this he rose from his chair and came to her and took one of her hands

in his. The room was warm, and she sat near the fire; but the slender

hand he held was cold. “Elsie, I want you to,” he said. “I don’t want to

think your mother might reproach me for not making you do what seems

best for you. Let me wire your aunt to-morrow you’ll come next week.”

Her lower lip moved pathetically, and along her eyelids a liquid

tremulousness twinkled too brightly. “I couldn’t——” she began.

“Don’t tell me that any more, Elsie.”

“No,” she said, meekly. “I meant I couldn’t get ready until week after

next, Papa—or the week after that. I couldn’t go before December. Not

before then, please, Papa.”

He patted her hand and laughed; pleased that she would be obedient;

touched that she was so reluctant to leave him. “That’s the girl! You’ll

have a glorious time, Elsie; see if you don’t!” he said, and, looking

down tenderly upon her shining eyes, never suspected the true anguish

that was there.

XXIII

THE STRANGE MIRROR

IT WAS still there, and all the keener, when Elsie dressed before the

French mirror in the big and luxurious bedchamber to which she had been

shown on her arrival at her aunt’s house.

“Mrs. Cromwell and Miss Cornelia had an engagement they couldn’t break.

They said for me to say they’re sorry they couldn’t be here when you

came,” a maid told her. “Mrs. Cromwell said tell you she’s giving a

dinner for you and Miss Cornelia this evening. It’s set for early

because they’re going to theatricals and dancing somewheres else

afterward, so she thought p’raps you better begin dressing soon as your

trunk gets here. They’ll have to dress in a hurry, theirselves, so you

may not see ’em till dinner.”

But Elsie did not have to wait that long. Half an hour later, when she

had begun to dress, Cornelia rushed in, all fur and cold rosy cheeks.

She embraced the visitor impetuously. “D’you mind bein’ hugged by a

bear?” she asked. “I couldn’t wait even to take off my coat, because I

remembered what an awf’ly nice _little_ thing you were! Do you know we

haven’t seen each other for nine years?” She stepped back with her hands

upon Elsie’s shoulders. “I’ve got to fly and dress,” she said. “_My_ but

you’re lovely!”

With that, she turned and scurried out of the room, leaving behind her a

mingled faint scent of fur and violets, and the impression upon Elsie

that this cousin of hers was the prettiest girl she had ever seen.

Cornelia’s good looks terrified her the more. Probably there were other

girls as pretty as that among Cornelia’s friends, the people she was to

meet to-night. And Cornelia’s rush into the room, her flashing greeting,

so impulsive, and her quick flight away were all flavoured with that

dashingness with which Elsie felt she could never compete. “_My_, but

you’re lovely!” was sweet of Cornelia, Elsie thought. But girls usually

said things like that to their girl visitors—especially when the

visitors had just arrived. Besides, anybody could see that Cornelia was

as kind as she was pretty.

“_My_, but you’re lovely!” was pleasant to hear, even from an impulsive

cousin, yet it was of no great help to Elsie. She went on with her

dressing, looking unhappily into the glass and thinking of what irony

there had been in her father’s persistence. “To _make_ me have a ‘good

time’!” she thought. “As if I wouldn’t have had one at home, if I could!

But of course he didn’t know that.”

She was so afraid of what was before her, and so certain she was

foredoomed, that during this troubled hour she learned the meaning of an

old phrase describing fear; for she was indeed “sick with apprehension.”

She took some spirits of ammonia in a glass of water as a remedy for

that sickness. “Oh, Papa!” she moaned. “What have you done to me?”

The maid who had brought her to her room reappeared with a bouquet of

rosebuds and lilies of the valley, to be worn. “It’s from one of the

gentlemen that’s coming to dinner, Miss Cornelia said. He sent two.

Pr’aps I could pin it on for you.”

Elsie let her render this service, and when it was done the woman smiled

admiringly. “It certainly becomes you,” she said. “I might say it looks

like you.”

Elsie regarded her with a stare so wide and blank that the maid thought

her probably haughty. “Excuse me, ma’am. Could I be of any more

assistance?”

“No, thank you,” Elsie said, still staring, and turned again to the

mirror as the flatterer left the room.

The bouquet was beautiful, and, before the evening was over, the unknown

gentleman who had sent it would be of a mind that the joke was on him,

Elsie thought. The misplaced blarney of an Irishwoman had amazed but not

cheered her; and the clock on the mantel-shelf warned her that the time

was ten minutes before seven. She took some more ammonia.

The next moment into the room came her aunt, large, decorously

glittering, fundamentally important. She was also warm-hearted, and she

took her niece in her arms and kissed her as if she wanted to kiss her.

Then she did as Cornelia had done—held her at arm’s length and looked

at her. “You dear child!” she said. “I’ve wanted so long to get hold of

you. A man never knows how to bring up a girl; she has to do it all

herself. You’ve done it excellently, I can see, Elsie. You have lovely

taste; that’s just the dress I’d have picked out for you myself. And to

think I haven’t seen you since your dear mother left us! Cornelia hasn’t

seen you for much longer than that—you and she haven’t had a glimpse of

each other since you were ten or eleven years old.”

“Yes,” Elsie said. “I saw her a little while ago.” She gulped feebly,

and by a great effort kept her voice steady. “Aunt Mildred, how proud of

her you must be! I want to tell you something: I think Cornelia is the

very prettiest girl I’ve ever seen in my whole life.”

Mrs. Cromwell took her hands from her niece’s shoulders, and, smiling,

stepped backward a pace and shook her head. “No,” she said. “Cornelia’s

very pretty, but she isn’t _that_ pretty.”

“I think she is.”

“No.” Mrs. Cromwell laughed; then became serious. She swept a look over

her niece from head to foot—the accurately estimating scrutiny of an

intelligent and experienced woman who is careful to be an honest mother.

“Of course Cornelia isn’t in your class,” she said, quietly.

Then she turned to the door. “Come down to the drawing-room a minute or

so before seven,” she said, and was gone.

Elsie stood, cataleptic.

The words seemed to linger upon the stirred air of the spacious room.

“Of course Cornelia isn’t in your class.” Cornelia’s mother had not

intended to be satirical; she had been perfectly serious and direct, and

she had really meant that Cornelia, not Elsie, was of the lower class of

prettiness. Here were three dumfounding things in a row: “_My_, but

you’re lovely!” “It certainly becomes you—I might say it looks like

you.” “Of course Cornelia isn’t in your class.” The third was the

astounding climax that now made the first two almost—almost convincing!

Elsie rushed to the long mirror and in a turmoil of bewilderment gazed

and gazed at what she saw there. And as she looked, there slowly came a

little light that grew to be a sparkling in those startled eyes of hers;

her lips parted; breathlessly she smiled a little;—then, all in a

flash, radiantly. For what she saw in the mirror was charming. No fear

of hers, no long experience of neglect, could deny it; and at last she

was sure that whatever the wrong thing about her was, it could be

nothing she would ever see in a mirror. She was actually what at home

she had sometimes suspected and then believed impossible.

She was beautiful—and knew it!

Marvelling, trembling with timid and formless premonitions of rapture,

she stood aglow in the revelation. She leaned closer to the mirror and

spoke to it in a low voice, almost brokenly: “_My_, but you’re lovely—I

might say it looks like you—of course she isn’t in your class!”

Then, with new and strange stars in her eyes, this sudden Cinderella

went out of her room and down the wide stairway, dazed but not afraid.

The miracle had already touched her.

Her uncle met her at the doorway of the drawing-room. “This is not

little Elsie!” he said. “Why, good heavens, your father didn’t write us

his Elsie had grown up into anything like _you_!”

Immediately he took her upon his arm and turned to cross the room with

her, going toward the dozen young people clustered about Cornelia.

But Cornelia came running to her cousin. “You’re dazzling!” she

whispered, and it was obvious that Cornelia’s friends had the same

impression. They stopped talking abruptly as Elsie entered the room, and

they remained in an eloquent state of silence until Cornelia began to

make their names known to the visitor. Even after that, they talked in

lowered voices until they went out to the dining-room.

XXIV

TRANSFIGURATION

THEY were livelier at the table, but not nearly so noisy as Mamie Ford

and Paul Reamer and their intimates would have been at a dinner party at

home, Elsie thought; though this was but a hasty and vague comparison

flitting through her mind. She was not able to think definitely about

anything for a time: she was too dazzled by being dazzling. Her clearest

thought was an inquiry: Was this she, herself, and, if she was indeed

Elsie Hemingway, were these queer, kind, new people now about her quite

sane?

The tall young man with the long face who sat at her left talked to her

as much as he could, being hampered by the circumstance that the

fair-haired short young man on her right did his best to talk to her all

the time, except when she spoke. Then both of them listened with

deference; and so did a third young man directly across the table from

her. More than that, she could not look about her without encountering

the withdrawing glances of other guests of both sexes, though some of

these glances, not from feminine orbs, were in no polite flurry to

withdraw, but remained thoughtfully upon her as long as she looked their

way. _Could_ it be Elsie Hemingway upon whom fond eyes of youth thus so

sweetly lingered?

Too centred upon the strange experience to think much about these

amazing people except as adjuncts to her transfiguration, she

nevertheless decided that she liked best the tall gentleman at her left.

He was not so young as the others, appearing to be as far advanced

toward middle-age as twenty-seven—or possibly even twenty-nine—and she

decided that his long, irregular face was “interesting.” She asked him

to “straighten out the names” of the others for her, hoping that he

would straighten out his own before he finished.

He began with Lily Dodge. “_Our_ prettiest girl,” he explained, honestly

unconscious of what his emphasis implied. “That is, she’s been generally

considered so since your cousin Anne was married. The young man on Miss

Dodge’s right and in such a plain state of devotion is named Henry

Burnett just now.”

“Just now? Does his name change from time to time?”

“Poor Henry’s doesn’t, no; nor the condition in which Miss Dodge keeps

him—probably because she likes to win golf tournament cups with him. I

mean, the next time you see her at a dinner the man beside her in that

state may have another name. _She_ changes ’em.”

“I see,” Elsie said. She looked absently at Miss Dodge, not aware that

there could be anything in common between them, much less that in a

manner they had shared a day of agony, no great while past. “She seems

very lovely.”

“In her own way, yes,” her neighbour returned without enthusiasm. “The

man on her left——”

Elsie laughed and interrupted. “What I meant to get at—if you don’t

mind—was the name of the man on _my_ left!”

“Of course you wouldn’t have caught it,” he said. “You naturally

wouldn’t remember, hearing it spoken with the others.”

“No,” she said. “Yet I think I do remember that Cornelia spoke it a

little more impressively than she did any of theirs.”

“That’s only because I’m in her father’s firm. The most junior member,

of course. They use me as a waste-basket.”

“As what?”

“A waste-basket. When Mr. Cromwell and the really important partners

discover some bits of worthless business cluttering up the office they

fill me up with it. Every good office has a young waste-basket, Miss

Hemingway.”

“But you haven’t yet told me this one’s name.”

“Harley.”

He laughed ruefully, and she asked why. “Harley doesn’t seem a funny

name to me,” she said. “I don’t understand your laughing.”

“It’s to keep from crying,” he explained. “My father was dead before I

was born and my mother died just after. I was taken over by my

grandfather, and he named me for three of Napoleon’s marshals—Berthier

Ney Junot Harley. It takes a grandfather to do things like that to you!”

“But Junot wasn’t a marshal,” Elsie said. “He hoped to be, but the

Emperor never made him one; Junot was too flighty.”

Mr. Harley stared. “I remember that’s true;—I spoke of three marshals

hastily. I should have said two and a general. My grandfather brought me

up on ’em, and I still collect First Empire books. But imagine your

knowing!”

“You mean you think I don’t look——”

He interrupted earnestly. “I’m afraid it’s too soon for you to let me

tell you how I think you look. But you do laugh at my names, don’t you?”

“No; they don’t seem funny to me.”

“Don’t you ever laugh except when things are funny?” he asked.

“Yes, I do,” she said. “I’ve laughed thousands of times when everything

was horribly unfunny.”

“Then why did you laugh?”

For an instant she looked at him gravely. “To try to be ‘popular,’” she

said.

Plainly he thought this funny enough for laughter. “That _is_ a joke!”

he said. “But if laughing makes you any more ‘popular’ than you would be

without it, I hope for this one evening at least you’ll be as solemn as

an obelisk.”

Of course Elsie said, “Why?”

“Because if you laugh I won’t get to see anything of you at all. I’m

afraid I won’t anyhow.”

He spoke with gravity, meaning what he said; and the event proved his

fear justified. He got halfway round the country club ballroom with her,

after the theatricals, a surprising number of times, but seldom much

farther. However, he conclusively proved his possession of that

admirable quality, dogged persistence, and so did the other young

gentlemen of the dinner party. So did more than these, including

probably a majority of the men and youths, married or single, present

that evening at the Blue Hills Club.

Elsie wondered when the spell would break. It seemed impossible that she

wouldn’t be found out presently as a masquerader and dropped into her

old homelike invisibility. But whether the break came or not, she knew

she would never again be so miserable as she had been, because she was

every moment more and more confidently daring to know that she was

beautiful. She laughed at a great many things that weren’t funny during

this gracious evening; for laughter may spring as freely from excited

happiness as from humour; but she made no effort to be noisy—noisiness

appeared to be not a necessity at all, but superfluous. And what pleased

her most, the girls were “nice” to her, too, as she defined their

behaviour;—they formed part of the clusters about her when the music

was silent, and they eagerly competed to arrange future entertainment

for her. Elsie loved them all, these strange, adorable people who had

not seen the wrong thing about her.

The old walls built round her by her own town, enclosing her with such

seeming massive permanence and so tightly, now at a stroke proved to be

illusion; she was discovering that they were but apparitions all unreal,

and that this world is mysterious and can be happily so. Something of

its humorous mysteries in dealing with young hearts another person, near

her, also learned that night; for Cornelia Cromwell, by coincidence, had

a queer experience of her own.

Beyond the outer fringe of dancers she saw her mother standing among a

group of the older people;—one of these was Miss Bailey, the principal

of the suburban school in which Cornelia had once been a pupil. Cornelia

had not seen her for several years and went conscientiously to greet

her. Principal and former pupil made the appropriate exchanges; but

Cornelia was rather vague with the grayish gentleman who had Miss Bailey

upon his arm.

Mrs. Cromwell said something as in correction of an error; but it was

too late, and the couple had moved away before Cornelia understood.

“You called her Miss Bailey,” Mrs. Cromwell explained. “She’s been

married to Professor Bromley for two years.”

“What! Was that funny little old——” Cornelia checked herself; but the

tactful mother had already turned away to speak to someone else. The

daughter stood and gazed at the stiff little old-fashioned gentleman

standing punctiliously arm-in-arm with his wife. “Oh, dear _me_!”

Cornelia whispered.

Then she ran back, wide-eyed, to rejoin an anxious lad who had arrived

late. “Look here,” he said. “You’ve missed another chance to let me meet

your cousin. What did you run away like that for?”

“To learn something important,” Cornelia told him. “Come on;—I’ll get

you through to Elsie somehow.”

For the unmasking of Elsie, that dreaded break in the spell, still

postponed itself as the evening wore on. Her miraculous night continued

to be a miracle to the end, and she was a girl grateful for wonders when

she talked them over with her cousin in the big bedroom, after two

o’clock in the morning.

“I never met such darling people in the whole world!” she declared. “I

never knew——”

“What nonsense!” Cornelia laughed. “You must be perfectly used to being

a sensation wherever you go, Elsie.”

“A ‘sensation’?” Elsie cried. “_I?_”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know it!”

“Cornelia, you don’t understand. Nobody was ever really nice to me at a

party before to-night in my whole life.”

At that her cousin beamed upon her. “I believe that’s what I like best

of all about you, Elsie.”

“You mean nobody ever being nice to me before?”

“No,” Cornelia laughed. “I mean your not admitting that you know it. Of

course you do know, because it’s impossible for a girl like you not to

realize the effect you have on people; but I love you for pretending you

don’t see it.”

“But it’s true,” Elsie insisted. “Until to-night nobody ever——”

“Yes, yes! Go on! It’s very becoming, and it’s what placates the other

girls so that you get both sexes in your train, you clever thing!”

“I’m not clever, though,” the visitor protested. “I’m no good at all at

pretending things. I’m not——”

“Aren’t you?” Cornelia laughed. “Well, it’s nice of you to _try_ to be

modest, then. Your thinking you ought to be is one of your charms. It

isn’t the biggest one, though. Everybody saw that one the instant you

came downstairs to-night and stood in the drawing-room doorway, just

before Father went to bring you in. It was very striking, Elsie.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“That’s right; you oughtn’t to know,” Cornelia said, seriously. “It has

to be spontaneous, I suppose, and it probably can’t be imitated or done

deliberately.”

“But I didn’t do _anything_!” Elsie cried.

“I know you didn’t; that’s just what I’m pointing out. Maybe it was

something they call ‘magnetism’; but anyhow it was more than just being

a beauty. Of course you’re _that_——”

“Nobody ever told me so; not before——”

“Nonsense!” Cornelia interrupted; then she went on: “It seemed to lie in

not only being a beauty, but in being a beauty with a kind of glow. I

don’t know just how else to express it, because it’s better than having

what they call the ‘come hither’ look. It was—well, _charm_, I suppose.

People might never notice that a beauty is a beauty if she doesn’t have

something of it. But ‘charm’ _is_ too vague to express it exactly. It

was a look as if—as if——” Cornelia hesitated, groping. “Well, I can’t

find any way to tell it except to say it was as if you knew something

mysterious and lovely about yourself. And it makes everybody else crazy

to know it, too!”

She jumped up, pointing at the clock upon the mantel. “Good heavens! And

we’ve got engagements for every minute of the next two weeks, beginning

at half-past eight to-morrow morning! Don’t bother to put those flowers

in water, Elsie; it’d only be a waste. There’ll be more to-morrow!”

“I’d like to keep these,” Elsie said. “I think I’d like to keep them

forever.”

“Dear me! Did he make that great an impression on you?”

“Who?”

“Elsie, you _are_ a hypocrite! Berthier Ney Junot Harley!”

“I didn’t even know it was he that sent them. I wanted to keep them

because they’d remind me of—of everything.”

And when Cornelia, touched by the way this was spoken, had kissed her

fondly and gone out, Elsie put the pretty bouquet in a vase of water.

Then she took one of the rosebuds from the cluster of them and pinned it

upon her breast for the night. She had liked Berthier Harley best; but

it was not on his account that she wore his rosebud through her dreams;

it was to remind her of—of everything!

She awoke early, smiling, and the bright wings of all her new fairy

memories were fluttering in her heart. Then, reflecting, she became

incredulous. Somewhere she had heard that every girl, no matter what her

looks, has one night in her life when she is beautiful. Her own night

had come at last; she could never doubt that. But what if it were the

only one?

She jumped up and ran to the mirror. No;—tousled and flushed from warm

and happy sleep, still drowsy, too, she was beautiful in the early

sunshine. She knew it, and it was true. Last night had been her night,

but it was not to be her only night;—and so, half laughing in her

delight, she nodded charmingly to this charming mirror and began to

think about what clothes to wear for the first day of her triumphant

visit. She had no serious doubt now that it would remain triumphant, and

so long as she kept upon her that glamour Cornelia had described as the

look of “knowing something mysterious and lovely” about herself, Elsie

was right not to doubt. She kept the look, and the longer she kept it,

the easier it was to keep. Her visit was all glorious.

XXV

GLAMOUR CAN BE KEPT

YOUNG Mr. Paul Reamer had been away, too, that winter. With no

profession or business to localize his attention, and a heritage

sufficient to afford him comfortable wandering, he had “tried California

for a change,” as he said; and on his return he went at once to tell

Miss Ford about Hollywood. She was not at home; but he waited;—she came

in presently, and made a satisfactory noise over him.

“To think of my not being here when you came!” she exclaimed when she

had reached a point of more subdued demonstrations. “I’d just run over

to Elsie’s for half an hour——”

“Where?”

“To Elsie’s. I spend about half my time there, I expect, and——”

“You do?” He looked puzzled and a little amused. “What for?”

“Why, everybody does,” Mamie returned, surprised. “That is, when she’s

home. She’s away a good deal of the time, you know.”

“You mean Elsie Hemingway?”

“Why, naturally. What other Elsie is there?”

“I don’t know.” He looked more puzzled and more amused. “You say,

‘everybody’ spends about half the time there?” He laughed. “That sounds

funny! What on earth’s made her house such a busy place all of a

sudden?”

“Oh, it isn’t sudden,” Mamie said, and she added, reflectively, “You

know Elsie always was about the best-_looking_ girl in town.”

“Oh, possibly. It never seemed to get anywhere though,” he returned.

“She’s good-looking all right, I suppose, but not the way anybody would

ever notice.”

“What?” Mamie cried. “Why, you don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“I don’t?” He laughed incredulously. “Look here. What _is_ all this

about little Elsie Hemingway? When I left town——”

Miss Ford interrupted: “Have you seen old Fred yet?”

“No. I haven’t seen anybody.”

“Well, you’d better see old Fred and ask him ‘What _is_ all this about

little Elsie Hemingway?’ He’ll probably fall in your arms and burst

right out crying!”

“What for?”

“Why, for the same reason some of the others would do the same thing!”

Paul shook his head. “I don’t think it’s friendly to try to fill me up

with fairy stories, Mamie—not just the first minute after I’ve come

home anyhow. When I went away——”

“Oh, there’ve been lots of changes,” Miss Ford assured him. “You’ll have

to get used to ’em. We’ve been used to the change about Elsie so long

now I suppose we hardly realize there _was_ a change. I guess what

happened was that we never used to appreciate her, and she had a way of

not seeming to feel she counted much, herself; but now we’ve got a

little older and have more sense, or something, and we all see what a

wonderful girl she is. You ought to hear old Fred! When he gets

started—well, of course, I think she’s great myself, but after I’ve

listened to poor old Fred’s babble for a couple of hours I almost hate

her!”

Again Mr. Reamer shook his head. “It doesn’t seem to me my hearing’s

exactly right. Are you really telling me——”

“You better go see,” Mamie advised him. “Oh, you’ll get it, too! You

think you won’t, but you will. You’ll get it as bad as any of ’em, Paul

Reamer.”

The experienced young man laughed in sheerest incredulity; but that

evening, his curiosity being somewhat piquantly aroused, he acted upon

Miss Ford’s advice and went to find out if it could possibly be true

that he had overlooked anything important in so long overlooking Elsie

Hemingway. It didn’t seem probable, but if it proved to be the fact, he

was somewhat amusedly prepared to make good to himself what he had lost

by the overlooking.