The name cast a chill over the little gathering just as the new cheer
was warming it, and they were all vicariously embarrassed by what, just
at that time, amounted to a _contretemps_. If Rankin himself, passing
by outside at that very moment, could have seen the expressive glances
that were secretly exchanged before they all yielded to the impulse
to fix unitedly on Garwood's face, he would have had a sensation to
gladden him during all his homeward way. But Garwood met the situation
with real dignity.
"Well, Jim will be against me, of course."
They might have demurred out of mere politeness, but Garwood added:
"And I can assure you, gentlemen, he is an antagonist not to be
despised."
The mention of Rankin's name, however, had the final effect of forcing
them to seek some positive means of dealing with the situation, and
after the preliminary waste of time common to most conferences, they
began at last to plan for the coming primaries. They were at it a long
while, and when in the chill, ghastly hours of the early morning they
separated, Garwood voiced what was doubtless in the hearts of all of
them, when he said to Pusey:
"Remember, we have Jim Rankin to fight, Pusey."
Pusey switched his little eyes toward Garwood, but Garwood did not see
them. He was thinking of other days.
IX
Garwood awoke after a few hours of restless sleep, snatched a hurried
breakfast, seized his hat and was going away without a word, when Emily
followed him through the hall and to the door, and with nervousness and
suspense showing in her concentrated brows she looked up at him and
said:
"I'll be glad when this day's over."
"So'll I," he rejoined, and then, though he had stepped on the veranda,
he turned again. A sudden tenderness, springing from the need of
support and sympathy he himself felt that day, overflowed his heart,
and he pressed his fingers to her brow and touched the wrinkles.
"I don't like to see those there," he said, and as if in instant
response to his whim, her smile smoothed them away.
"You'll send me word, Jerome, won't you?" she said, "the babies and
I'll be watching and waiting, you know. Oh, I _wish_ we could help!"
He smiled his old smile at her loyalty.
"Good by," he said; "I'll keep you posted." And he ran down the steps.
The rain was slanting down to make an ideal primary day, and Garwood
was glad of the waiting carriage which, in the extravagance a man can
always justify to himself in the midst of a campaign, he had ordered
the night before. Emily watched him drive away, down the streaming
street. Once he turned and looked back through the window at her, or
she thought he did, and she waved her hand.
Then all the morning long she went about the house with the memory of
his kiss upon her lips, and she sang at times, though her heart would
forever leap into her throat when she thought of the bitter contest
going on in the rain that was falling upon the green fields of Polk
County. The rain fell steadily in the gloom with an impressiveness
that would remind her of the silent fate which that day was deciding
Jerome's future and her own.
She felt as if she were passing through a crisis in her life. She found
it impossible to apply herself steadily to any one of the futile little
tasks that are always awaiting the hand of the housewife, but wandered
aimlessly about, unable to rest, unable to work, unable to do anything
until she knew the event of that day. She had found a new faith in
Jerome with the kiss he had given her at parting, and she lived over
and over again that one last moment when he had smiled down into her
eyes with the expression she remembered of other days. That moment
and that kiss were enough to blot out all the years of her loneliness
and renunciation, and as those years faded from her view she could
look forward now with a new hope and a new confidence to the happier
days she felt must come when this last battle had been fought. For she
felt it would be the last battle; she determined that it must be the
last battle; she could not endure the strain and suspense of another,
and her soul's sincere desire took the romantic form of a prayer that
Jerome return to her bearing his shield or being borne upon it.
The rain had come with a thunder storm early in the morning, but as the
day advanced the temperature lowered and a cold, raw wind blowing from
the west lashed out the last of the warm weather they had been having
all over central Illinois. The hope of the spring seemed suddenly gone;
the day, indeed, might have belonged to that dreary season of the fall,
when gray clouds hang low and children long for the darkness that will
bring the needed cheer of early lamp-light.
The streets were silent and deserted. Now and then, perhaps some
grocer's wagon would lurch along, its driver slapping the streaming
rubber blanket on his horse's back with his wet reins, and sometimes
one of the town's tattered old hacks would rattle by. Here and there,
near some cobbler's shanty, or by the door of a little barber shop,
ward workers huddled in shivering groups, and every little while men
drove out of town in buggies or buckboards, to look after the caucuses
that were to be held that afternoon in the townships; but the people
themselves, as their habit ever was, in Grand Prairie, evinced little
interest in the political contest at this critical stage of its
development, and seemed to be indoors waiting for the rain to cease.
Yet a great battle was raging in Grand Prairie that day, and Garwood's
law offices were once more serving as political headquarters. All
morning long the crowd of workers whom he had enrolled in his new
organization thronged the outer office, each of them wishing to seize
Garwood a moment for himself, as if his suggestion, or his complaint,
or the news he bore was such that Garwood himself alone should hear it.
Their clothes were soaked with the rain, their wet boots tracked the
floor with mud, their umbrellas trickled little streams of dirty water.
The air, already saturated with heavy moisture and foggy with the smoke
of tobacco, which does for the smoke of battle in these political
contests, was foul with the fumes of beer and whisky, while the whiff
of an onion now and then brought to mind the long saloon of Chris
Steisfloss below where the pink mosquito-netting had been removed for
that day from the free-lunch table.
In his private office, his rumpled hair falling to his haggard eyes,
his cravat untied, his long coat tails gathered behind the hands that
were thrust deep in his trousers' pockets, Garwood strode back and
forth silent and savage, chewing the cigar that smoked away in the
corner of his mouth. Pusey was with him, tapping in and out of the
room, and so was Hale. Hale had been there all morning, for, having no
acquaintance in Grand Prairie, he could do nothing outside, and so he
sat, feeling that his stolid, imponderable presence must somehow be a
comfort to Garwood. And, besides, he did not know how he could decently
get away.
Garwood spoke to neither of them; but walked the floor and rolled his
cigar round and round in his mouth, spitting out pieces of it now and
then savagely. Once at the end of the beat he was pacing he paused by
the revolving bookcase in which he had kept his working library, the
books he had needed at his elbow when he was digging into the law.
These books, because of that rapid displacement which goes on in law
libraries, so swiftly do the appellate courts grind out new decisions,
were now out of date; the statutes were two sessions behind the
Legislature, the digest had been superseded by a new edition, the last
six numbers of his set of the reports were missing.
But he did not observe these things--a little volume had caught his
eye, and he picked it up, blew the dust from it, and opened it. And as
his glance fell on its pages, its well-read remembered pages, his face
softened and there passed across its darkness the faint reflection of
a smile. It was not a law book, for Garwood held it tenderly in his
hand, as though he loved it, and men do not learn to love law books. It
was a little leather covered copy of Epictetus, with the imprint of a
London publisher on its title page, one that Emily had given him, and
he had read it through and through, and it bore many loving marks on
its margins.
It had lain there on that bookcase, possibly untouched, certainly
unopened for years. He must have tossed it down there before his first
campaign--how long ago that seemed! He turned over the pages and here
and there he saw a marked passage, words that once had thrilled him,
more than that, words that had comforted him, but now they were cold
and dead, they no longer had any meaning or any message for him; he
wondered for a moment why it was so. But his mind could not long desert
its hard pressed post that day, and if for an instant he yearned for
some of the peace of the days that little book somehow stood for, he
tossed it back where it had lain so long, brushed his fingers together
to fleck the dust from them, and resumed his pacing.
Noon came, the clock in the high school tower struck, the bell in the
fire engine house tapped, the whistle at the woolen mills blew. The
outer office was deserted, Pusey had left an hour before, and when
Crawford and Hale suggested luncheon to Garwood, he shook his head so
petulantly that they were glad enough to go out and leave him alone.
When they had gone, he sank into his chair, sprawled his long legs out
before him, and sat there scowling darkly.
He sat there a long while, but finally he roused, got up, opened the
ugly walnut cupboard in his room, drew out a bottle and a glass and
poured out for himself a generous draft of whisky. He drank the stuff
without water, raw, and when he had taken advantage of his brief
seclusion to light a cigarette, inhaling its smoke eagerly, he began to
pace the floor again. Two or three times after that he stopped by the
cupboard and took the bottle down; at last he did not put it back in
its hiding place, but set it out openly on his desk. Now, the times he
passed it without drinking were growing fewer and fewer.
Hale was the first to return. Garwood had just halted by his desk and
poured himself another drink, and he stood with his hand still on the
bottle when Hale burst into the room. The man's face plainly foreboded
evil tidings, and he stood and stared at Garwood without speaking, as
if he disliked to tell him what was on his tongue. Garwood had raised
the glass, but with it at his lips he stopped and looked up to say:
"What in hell's the matter with you, Hale; are you drunk or crazy, or
have you seen a ghost?"
"I've seen--Bailey."
"Bailey!" Garwood slowly lowered the glass to the desk, as if Hale had
seen something more than a ghost.
"Yes."
"Out on--what's that long street? He was with Rankin, goin' west."
"Over to the woolen mills?" Garwood asked.
"I suppose so," said Hale. "You see, after Crawford and I'd got a bite
to eat over at that restaurant on the other side of the square--what's
the name of it?"
"Oh, damn the name!" exclaimed Garwood. "Go on."
"Well, anyways, after that I went out to try an' do somethin', but
about all I could do was to hire 'bout half a dozen hobos who were
goin' through from Chicago, and I was takin' them down to Enright so's
he could vote 'em at all the prim'ries, you know, and I happened to
look up--and there I see Bailey."
"What was he doing, did you say?" asked Garwood with the morbid
fascination the recital of some painful fact has for the one it most
concerns.
"Oh, he was just moseyin' along the street with Rankin, you know that
slow, splay-footed, knock-kneed way he has of walking, don't you?
Oh--there's no doubt it's him!"
Garwood slowly swallowed his drink, and had just turned to speak again,
when Pusey entered.
"Did you know Bailey's here?" he demanded.
Pusey walked straight to the desk, and he had lifted the bottle before
he replied:
"Yes."
"When did you hear?" Garwood asked.
"Just now. I repaired here instantly to apprise you."
"You did!" said Garwood. "Well, where in hell are you going to repair
to next to do something about it? Where did _you_ see him?"
"I saw him at the Cassell House, and Rankin--"
"Yes--Rankin," said Garwood. He ceased to give attention to Pusey,
since the climax of his tale was already too fully known, but repeated
Rankin's name in a reminiscent tone not unlikely to inspire pleasure
in the breast of Rankin's successor, as if one should sigh for a first
wife in the presence of the second. "Jim Rankin," he repeated, "that's
the worst of it."
"You miss Rankin, heh?" piped Pusey, squinting at the drink he was
pouring.
Garwood turned on him then, and shouted angrily:
"Yes, damn you, I do! If he were here now he'd have a suggestion; he'd
have some resources. What have _you_ to offer?"
Pusey lifted the glass and even turned deliberately to hold it more
in range with the window, so that the light could stream through it
and bring out the rich, warm colors of the liquor. And then, carefully
tilting the drink into his gullet, he put the glass down, sucked his
mustache into his mouth to get the last lingering taste of the whisky,
and said:
"Buy him."
"Who?" said Garwood.
"Rankin."
Garwood took an impetuous step toward Pusey, and then halting suddenly
he stared at him in utter amazement. Hale turned on the little editor
a look no less startled, but quickly glanced around at Garwood to see
what he would do. The anger that had flushed Garwood's face slowly died
out of it, and his lips began to curl into a mordant smile that slowly
took on in turn the qualities of contempt and pity.
"Pusey," he said, not at all in the tone that Hale had expected to hear
break from him, "Pusey," he said, "don't be foolish."
"Foolish?" repeated Pusey seriously. "Is it so foolish, think you?"
"Damnably foolish," Garwood replied.
"Pardon me," Pusey said, "you evidently misunderstood me."
"Misunderstood you? Didn't you suggest buying Jim Rankin? You evidently
don't know men."
"Did I say Jim Rankin?" answered Pusey. "If I did, I meant Jim Rankin's
men."
"Oh," Garwood and Hale exclaimed together in a weak, unconvinced note.
Garwood looked at Pusey more charitably, and Pusey returned the look by
one of subtlest meaning. Thus they stood and gazed at each other for a
whole minute, that seemed, in the stillness that dripped into the room,
a whole age.
It was, in the end, Hale who spoke.
"We'll have to do something, turn some sort of a trick, and do it
quick. Zeph Bailey ain't here for nothing!"
Hale had drawn his watch from his pocket.
"What time is it?" Garwood asked.
Hale looked at his watch again.
"Two-thirty," he replied. He had once been a railroader.
"The bank closes at four," said Garwood. He began slowly and
hesitatingly to button his waistcoat, and as though to occupy some
irresolute moment that awaited the formation of big issues, he poured
himself another drink, and gulped it, making a wry face. Another moment
passed while the two men stood narrowly watching him.
"The polls close at seven, don't they?" he asked.
"Don't know but they do," replied Pusey.
Then Garwood, with the firmness of a final decision, put his hat on his
head.
"You wait here," he said.
Then he bolted from the room.
X
The old ramshackle hack that had made its stand in front of the Cassell
House so long that it had acquired the status of a local institution,
was tearing furiously out Sangamon Avenue. The appearance of this
ancient vehicle outside its proper habitat, usually betokened some
emergency; and when Emily, with an ear keen for omens that day, heard
the rattle of its rheumatic joints far down the street, and when she
saw it verify her impression of disaster by turning in at the carriage
gate and rolling up under the dripping trees, she flew to the door with
her face as white as if she had seen a messenger boy coming with a
telegram.
When she saw the door of the hack burst open before the hack itself
could come to a stop, and Jerome imperil his bones by leaping out
between its wheels, she was relieved to have him whole and sound before
her eyes, for she had half expected to see his limp form borne in by
careful attendants. Her fears were partly realized when she saw his
gray face and the blue circles that lay under his eyes, and they were
expressed in the breathless voice in which she exclaimed, as he leaped
up the steps:
"Jerome! What is it!"
"Come in here--quick," he said. She followed him at speed, imploring
him to confess that he was ill. He did not answer, but led the way in
hot haste to the sitting room, and then across that to Emily's little
writing desk, which stood open in the bay window. She watched him in
wonderment as he fumbled in the breast of his coat and produced at last
a paper, which, rustling forth, he spread before her on the desk. Then
he seized a pen, plunged it in the ink, and pushing her into the chair
he had dragged up to the desk, he said:
"Here Em--sign this--quick!"
She looked at him in amazement that each moment widened her eyes the
more; looked at him and then looked at the paper he held to the leaf of
her desk with a trembling finger. She took the pen mechanically.
"Here," he said, jerking out his words; "right there--under my name.
You're to sign with me."
She noted the blaze in his eyes; the odor of tobacco and liquor he
exhaled oppressed her; she looked from him to the paper on the desk,
then back to him again. In her bewilderment she gasped:
"Why--what is it for?"
"Oh, it's a note!" he said, crossly, while his brows gathered in his
impatience. "Sign it, quick! I haven't a minute to lose! I'll explain
it to you afterward."
She looked again into his brilliant eyes, she felt his tainted breath
upon her face, then something of his own fever of haste caused her
heart to leap, and she put her name to the note below where Jerome had
scrawled his own. Garwood snatched up the note and thrust it back in
his pocket. Then he turned to go. But Emily arose and caught at him.
"Jerome! Dear! What is it! What has happened? What is it for?"
The tumult of his troubled soul broke forth and he poured it out upon
her.
"It's for money--money--money!" he cried, and he smote the unstable
little desk with his fist, making it rock. "What is everything for in
these days!" His breath came hard and fast, the blue crescents in which
his eyes burned deepened perceptibly, and his eyes flamed as if all the
fires of all excitement were about to leap out. In his cheeks, now of
an unusual pallor, two red spots glowed.
"But what is the money for?" she persisted, still clinging to him as he
backed away from her. "Tell me--won't you?"
"It's for votes--votes--votes! Votes that I need more to-day than I
ever needed them!"
"Oh, Jerome!" she cried. "Don't--don't say that, don't talk that way!
Wait--wait, dear, sit down until you're calmer."
"Calmer!" he roared. "Calmer! With all my enemies at my heels?"
"But, dear, I don't like the sound of that. It would be better if you
were beaten honorably."
"Honorably!" he sneered. "Honorably! Do you know what it would mean to
me to be beaten now? Do you know what it would mean to _you_! Do you
want to go to the poor-house?"
He stopped in his mad rush of words and flung out his jaw at her
pugnaciously.
Emily stood trying to hold her husband's wild, unsteady eyes in her own
gaze for a moment.
"Why, Jerome," she said in low, even accents, "it would be as bad
as--as--as that story they told of you in your first campaign!"
His face without relaxing took on the mockery of a smile, then he
laughed harshly. The tone of the laugh shuddered through Emily. She had
released her hold on him, and now she took a step backward. Her lips
were parted and at last she spoke, her words coming reluctantly from
her throat. It was scarcely above a whisper that she said:
"Was that all--true?"
She saw the conviction in his eyes before it came to its verification
on his lips. He laughed again, the same harsh laugh as before.
"True!" he cried. "Of course it was true, you poor little fool!"
The words brought a cry from her, and, clasping her hands before her
face, she turned and sank into the chair and put her head down on the
desk.
Garwood stared at her awhile, then took a step toward her. He drew
nearer and bent over her, tried to draw her at last up into his arms.
"Emily!" he said. "Don't--it's all--I was--I was--crazy--"
Her head shook slowly from side to side.
"Go away," she said. "Go away--oh, please go away!"
She burst into tears, and relinquishing his hold of her he drew
himself up, swayed an instant, steadied himself by the desk, and then
said:
"All right, then, I'll go."
And he left the room and the house, trying to reclaim his dignity
with the erectness with which he took his careful steps down from the
veranda and to the waiting carriage. Then Emily heard the hack roll
away.
XI
Emily leaned at evening against the casement of the western window in
her room upstairs. The rain had ceased, and though the clouds were
still as gray and cold as stone, the air was becoming luminous, and
from somewhere had received a new inspiration, fresh and pure and
light. As she gazed listlessly away across the vacant lots that lay
beyond her home, she saw, along the rounded tree tops and the chimneyed
roofs that made for her the western sky line, that the blanket of cloud
was slowly rolling back upon itself, until at last it revealed a long,
thin strip of open sky, clear and blue as some remembered stretch of
summer sea. In the middle of this, far over on the west side of the
town, the low square tower, built like an Italian belvedere on the
Ursuline Sisters' Convent, was silhouetted, and below and all around,
the masses of foliage became vivid green in the new light that fell
upon them.
As all the world about shrank in the shades of the coming night, the
clouds deepened to a purple, and in the slow and silent changes that
went constantly forward, their edges above were softly tinged with
ashes of roses, while below, the reflected green of the trees changed
their drab to pink. Then there was traced for her a long, wavy thread
of glistening silver, the billowed top of some white cloud floating
deep in the illimitable distances behind that opening in the sky. And
then suddenly, the sun sinking into this proscenium illumined its
infinite and glorious vistas with a flood of golden light.
But it was all subconsciously that this woman followed the varying
shades and tones of color in the sunset of grays and golds, and if by
a strangely divided intelligence she noted the physical changes that
were being wrought in the world outside her, her thoughts within surged
in a great ocean, of feeling against the cold and desolate shore that
now bounded life for her. Otherwise, as she stood there at the close of
this fateful day, and saw the gold grow brighter and the pink deepen to
crimson, she might easily have worked out a poetic analogy between that
little sunset, with the convent tower to give it gloom, and her own
life; she would have done so once, and found a sweet exquisite sadness
in it, but now--a grief at last had come to her too real and too tragic
in its great reality for any such romanticism, a grief that sounded
deeper than any tears.
Other griefs could be borne; they could be voiced; they could
find comfort in the ministrations of sympathetic friends, in the
consolations of religion; more than all in the healing balm that
nature stores in the woods and fields. But here was a grief that was
the more intense because she had so long dreaded it, known it even,
though she had fought the recognition off, and never admitted it to
herself before. She saw all that now, and it made clear so many little
passages in her later life; passages that had been dark to her, and
filled with vague troubles.
Here was a grief that was no new thing, but an old thing, that had been
there all the time, like some fatal disease; she had felt its pains and
it had put its restraints and its limitations and its renunciations
upon her; now it had been correctly diagnosed at last, that was all;
and it could not be changed, nor cured, nor alleviated even; but she
must bear it alone and in silence, walking straight-lipped and dry-eyed
the long way that stretched before.
In some such mode as this her thoughts had been rushing on ever since
that moment downstairs in the afternoon when the whole truth had been
at last revealed to her. She had thought it out along every line she
could trace; she had analyzed and synthesized; she had viewed it
from every possible standpoint; she had built up elaborate schemes
of repair, of rehabilitation; she had planned a new life to be begun
when the wreck of the old had been cleared away by forgiveness and
new resolve; but in the end, it had all come to the same remorseless
conviction--her faith had been destroyed, it lay dead at her feet;
nothing could ever change that fact any more.
The colors were slowly dying out of the narrow strip of sky along the
horizon and it had become opalescent and serene with evening. A new
life seemed suddenly to awake in the world below her. A robin, that
should have been in bed, went springing across the yard, swelling its
red breast, and Emily was vaguely conscious of wondering if it were the
one she had heard that afternoon singing in the rain. Something moved
her to raise the window, something in the new and vital pulse that
thrilled the world.
With the inrushing air came the sickening odor of the late-flowering
locust tree, and there were borne to her as well the gentle sounds of
evening, the endless trilling of insects in the wet grass; the lowing
of a cow; by and by the belated crow of some rooster. The world was
alive and awake; it seemed to be stretching itself after its long
prostration in the rain, and now it enjoyed this breath of keen air
before it went to sleep, impatient for the hopeful morning when it
might take up once more its glad ambitious life. But for her--so
Emily's thoughts ran--there was no hope and no to-morrow.
The sun had trailed the last of his splendors across that narrow
opening in the sky. The opalescence swam into a new sea of silver, then
suddenly a bar of yellow broke it, there was a rush of violet, then
purple shadows dissolved the convent tower and the sky closed, cold and
dark and still. And there came into Emily's mind the lines:
"Life's night begins: let him never come back
to us!
There would be doubt, hesitation, and pain.
Forced praise on our part--the glimmer of twilight,
Never glad confident morning again!"
She closed her window and turned wearily away. She had her duties, her
little duties; John Ethan was calling, and the supper was to be laid;
life somehow after all must be lived.
She was going down the stairs, when suddenly from the little habits of
existence that persist sometimes ludicrously, sometimes irritatingly,
sometimes comfortingly, even in the most tragic moments of life, she
thought of the evening papers lying at that moment damp and limp
against the front door. The primaries--she stopped and steadied herself
by the baluster--what had been the result of the primaries? She shook
her head impatiently for thinking of them in that moment. What were
primaries to her now? And yet--would he win?
She went on down the stairs, she found the papers, and now when the
truth could no longer be hidden, or distorted to any one's advantage,
they printed the truth at last--none could tell the result at that
hour; it was the hardest political battle ever waged in Polk County,
and on it hung the political future of Jerome B. Garwood.
Something of the old excitement came back to her for a moment. He was
there in the thick of it, fighting hard; he was desperate; he had
risked all again for that political future--she stopped herself with a
gasp--if, indeed, his future alone were all that was involved! To her
it was his past that was involved; his past that meant more than all to
her now. He had, indeed, risked all upon this battle, and all had been
lost before the battle was begun!
She ate her lonely supper, she put her babies to bed, she prolonged all
her evening duties that they might fill up her thoughts and the slow
hours. Each sound, each foot-fall on the sidewalk startled her, and yet
no one came. The evening passed. At last she went to bed, but all the
noises of the night alarmed her, and in the darkness the burden of her
thoughts became insupportable.
At last she got up and went to the window that gave a view of Sangamon
Avenue and stood there watching and listening. She went back to bed,
but sleep was far from her that night and time and time again she rose
and went to her window. Finally, she wrapped herself in a shawl and
huddled on the floor at the low sill, and still watched and listened.
The night went by, hour after hour. Now and then she heard the baby
sighing in his sleep--the poor little baby--and she straightened up, a
dim, rigid, attentive figure there in the darkness. Once when the elder
child awoke, sleepily calling for a drink, she went to him, but she
could not stay; she came back again and resumed her lonely vigil.
And still the hours went by. The low night brooded over the slumbering
town. Far down that black and silent street, its shapes distorted and
unfamiliar in the shadows, she knew that his fate had been decided.
The early hours of the morning brought their chill, and she shrugged
herself more closely in her shawl, clutched it more tightly to her
breast. And there in the window, alone, she watched and waited while
the night grew old and waned.
XII
The crowd of men that filled Chris Steisfloss's saloon were not
reckoning the time that night. They pressed, as many of them as could,
against the bar, and those who were huddled behind this front rank
stretched their arms between the brushing shoulders for the glasses
that Chris himself and his bartender, both on duty, made haste to fill
each time some voice shouted an order for drink. The long bar-room was
stifling, and the gas jets flared sickly, uncertainly, in their efforts
to keep alive in an atmosphere from which the oxygen was so quickly
exhausted.
Above the tilted hats of the gathering a cloud of smoke drifted in
thin, gray currents along the low ceiling, following the drafts that
puffed aimlessly whenever the outer door opened, and let the cool
night air rush in with its sane and sanitary freshness. Over all, as
though a part of the low hanging cloud of smoke, as though an element
of the feculent atmosphere, hung almost palpably the mass of oaths and
epithets, disjointed words and empty phrases that were poured out in a
mad débâcle by all those excited voices. To this were added the scrape
and shuffle of boots, moving unsteadily on the floor, and the click of
glasses as these men pledged anew a cause which by all the defiance of
their angry tones was evidently lost.
In the midst of them all, with his broad back leaning against the rail
that guarded the bar, was Garwood himself. His rumpled shirt was open
at the throat, his cravat was gone, his soiled cuffs had come unlinked
and he fittingly portrayed in his whole appearance the utter rout and
demoralization which had that day overtaken his political faction. His
eyes blazed now with the confused emotions that ran riot in his soul,
and now they lost all their luster and seemed to be set in a filmy
stare, until their swollen lids fell heavily over them, to be raised
again only by an effort.
He had laid his hat down on the bar, where its brim, flattening to the
walnut surface, was soaking up the liquor that had been spilled from
an overturned glass. In a strange whim of his disordered mind he had
commanded every one to let the hat lie where it was, and they had all
obeyed, with the seriousness of drinking men. And there it reposed, all
its grace and expression gone, strangely typifying the wreck of its
wearer's fortunes.
As Garwood stood there, his black hair matted to his brow, his cheeks
and chin blue with a long day's growth of the stubble of his beard,
he suddenly flung over his shoulder a peremptory order to Steisfloss
to fill the glasses again, and when the saloon-keeper pushed the tall
bottle toward him, he turned half around and splashed a drink out of it
with an unsteady hand. Then holding the little tumbler in a precarious
grasp, he faced about again and with elbows resting on the bar behind
him, he broke forth in a thick voice:
"Don't you think I'm beaten! Don't you think it, I tell you! I may
be beaten _now_, you understand, but I'm not _beaten_! No, sir! I've
only begun. I tell you, I've only begun. They can keep me off the
delegation, what do _I_ care? I'll be at Springfield just the same.
They can send that Singed Cat to Congress if they want to, what do I
care? Jim Rankin--Jim Rankin--who's he? I'll lick 'em, I'll lick 'em
_all_, every one, _yet_. You'll see, you wait and see. You hear me? You
wait and see. I'll lick 'em all, every one, yet. I'll drive 'em out of
the district. I'll drive 'em out of the state, from the Wabash on the
east to the Mississippi on the west, from Dunleith to Cairo. I'll set
the buffalo grass on fire and sweep the state clean of them. You will
not find one of them o'er all the rolling prairies of Illinois."
As he rolled out the word "Illinois," in the tone the orators of that
state use when they wish to show their state pride, he swung his arm in
an all-embracing circle, and his auditors dodged the slopping whisky.
Then he stood and blinked at them.
"Why don't you fellows drink?" he broke forth again. "What do you want
to stand around that way for? What are you afraid of? Jim Rankin? Think
I'm licked, do you? Think I'm dead politically, do you? Well, I'll show
'em. I'll show 'em all. Why don't you drink, Pusey; why don't you drink
up? Think I ain't got any money? Well, I'll show you--Chris here knows
me. I'll show you--"
He fumbled in his pockets, produced a crumpled mass of green bills,
and held them forth in his fist.
"I tell you there isn't room for them and me on all the broad expanse
of Illinois--"
Some one struck up a favorite song of the campaign platforms:
"Not without thy wondrous story,
Illinois, Illinois;
Shall be writ the nation's glory,
Illinois, Illinois;
In the record of the years,
Abr'ham Lincoln's name appears,
Grant and Logan--and our tears,
Illinois, Illinois."
The crowd huddled more closely together, and with heavy voices joined
in the song. Some of the men, with serio-comical expressions, essayed
the tenor, others the bass, though the bass predominated, and they sang
over and over the few words of the song they could remember.
During this maudlin exhibition, the door opened, and Rankin, with
Bailey by his side, entered. Rankin was bespattered from hat to heel,
even his face was freckled with the little spots where the viscous mud
had dried. His huge body was flaccid with fatigue, and his appearance
was enough to show how heavily he had toiled at the polls that day
in his determination to defeat Garwood. Bailey showed no sign of
the equally hard day he had spent. He walked with the same awkward,
shambling gait, his little eyes looked out from their narrowed lids and
roved about him with their customary cunning. He showed neither signs
of exhaustion, though he always looked tired, nor of the elation that
probably was in his breast at the great victory which that day had been
his.
Rankin, when he saw the crowd with Garwood as its center, halted
suddenly and jerked his hat down over his eyes. He drew Bailey
hurriedly to the bar near the mirrored partition that screened the
scene within from the street without, and made a sign to Steisfloss.
The saloon-keeper, with an alert appreciation of the situation which
his long experience with men in their cups had taught him, silently
moved that way, and bent a listening ear toward the newcomers.
"Give us a little drink--an' hurry. We'll get out--don't let him see,"
said Rankin.
Steisfloss's heavy German face showed none of the gratitude he felt,
and quietly, almost surreptitiously, he set glasses and bottle before
the successful candidate at that day's primaries and the man who had
brought his success to pass.
Before they could take their liquor, some one at the edge of the crowd
near Rankin noticed him. Rankin's quick eye detected the recognition,
and he pulled the fellow toward him.
"Sh!" he whispered. "Don't let him see us. I didn't know he's here, or
we'd not come in. We'll duck. How long's he been in here?"
"Oh," said the man, "ever since he got that last news from the First
Ward."
Rankin could not restrain the gleam of pleasure that shot from his eye
at the memory of that triumph, but the gleam softened as he stole a
look at Garwood, and then, at last, died quite away, and there came in
its stead an expression of pain and pity.
"Poor Jerry!" he said, "I thought he's a little off when he came--"
he checked himself, and then--"when I saw him this afternoon," he
continued.
He looked at him for another moment, and then he said, angrily, to the
man whom all the time he kept between him and the crowd:
"Why don't some o' you fellers get him out o' here? What do you want to
let him disgrace himself that-away fer?"
The man looked at Rankin and shrugged his shoulders to tell how
helpless they all were.
"We've tried," he said. He looked around toward Garwood, who, having
concluded another speech, was tipping his glass into his mouth, his
head toppling on his neck as he did so. The man turned back again to
Rankin, still with that helpless look, but, suddenly, with a flash of
the eye as if a new thought had just come to him, he said:
"You try, Jim; you could do it. He thinks more of you to-day than of
all the rest put together."
Rankin faced the bar and hastily swallowed his bourbon.
"No," he said; "that's past."
And then he and Bailey slipped away.
"Poor Jerry!" sighed Rankin, as they went out the door.
But the Singed Cat, whose personality was destined so soon to become
the passion of the cartoonists, turned and cast back at his defeated
rival one of those glances from his unsearchable little eyes.
XIII
At the close of a day late in November Emily Garwood came down the walk
from the old house that had been her home so long, and at the gate
paused for a backward glance of farewell. The oaks under which for so
many years she had watched the coming and going of all she loved, were
barren, save for the few bronzed leaves that clung with the tenacity of
their species to the gnarled boughs. Other leaves, withered and yellow,
that had succumbed to the common fate of things, strewed the ground
everywhere. Here and there they had been pressed into wet mats by the
cold autumnal rains; otherwise they rustled with the wind that ranged
through the wide yard.
The night was falling swiftly, the darkness increasing by visible
degrees as if with the gradual closing of some automatic shutter that
was ultimately to exclude the light. Black shadows rose unexpectedly
from the ground and silently enfolded objects Emily had known so long
that they had become a part of her very life, so intimately associated
with all its experiences that she realized her own affection for them
but now, when she was leaving them. The old home, to her sensitive
imagination, seemed to regard her out of its vacant, lifeless windows
with a cold and distant stare, as if already it had begun to forget
her.
And so she closed the gate softly, as if the clash of its latch
might arouse memories that were making ready to pursue her out of
the old homestead, drew more snugly into the hollow of her arm the
bundle of odds and ends she had gathered up in her final inspection
of its dismantled rooms, and hurried away along Sangamon Avenue. The
atmosphere held in suspension many more autumnal rains, with such a
chill besides that her little figure seemed to shrink with the cold, as
it dissolved in the shadows and disappeared.
The day of the primaries had marked the fall of the last of Emily's
ideals, and she felt, with her old habit of fixing a formal duty for
every occasion that she must recognize the change by some definite,
decisive act. But as she gradually revolved the problem life had
set for her, and one after another weighed all the common solutions
that men and women consider at such times--perhaps because of sheer
inability to grapple with such monstrous spiritual difficulties--she
shrank from them, finding them all so sordid, so squalid, so inadequate
to a nature like hers. And so she lived on from day to day, trying to
reason it out, and failing in that, awaiting the next scene in her
domestic tragedy.
But nothing happened. Life went on somehow as before. If at times she
reproached herself with what seemed her indecision, she strove with
all conscience to perform the little duties of each day, until the
great duty could be revealed clearly to her, yet self-consciously
wondering how it was that she could think of common things, and do
common things, just as she had wondered, at the time her father died,
how it was, for instance, that she could leave the solemn twilight of
the chamber where she had just witnessed the mystery of death, and
straightway go and eat her supper. She did not see that her spirit was
thus unconsciously struggling to reassert itself; to identify itself
anew with the common, the real; to be like all else about it, for it
had not yet been given her to appreciate the love for the normal, the
abhorrence of the exceptional, the passion for equality that nature
reveals in her dealings with her children.
She was convinced that she must have some kind of reckoning
with Jerome; something in a way forensic and legal, with all
the conventional elements of trial, judgment and retribution or
forgiveness; at times she even dramatized the forms and terms of this
proceeding, which would atone for the past, and leave them where they
had been before. But the auspicious moment never presented itself; she
realized at last that it could not come; that the old ground had been
lost, and lost forever; that there could be nothing like resumption;
that they must begin, if at all, anew.
And so the summer had passed. She watched Jerome narrowly, noting every
change in humor, in whim, in expression, thinking it possible that
he might broach the subject that lay so near the hearts of both. At
first, in a remorse that was evident, he had been showing for her a new
consideration; a furtive consideration that was likely to exaggerate
its tenderness at times. He had sent her flowers and brought her
candy, like a lover, and if these silent appeals--while they touched
her--did not altogether reassure her, they must abundantly have
reassured him, for in the course of weeks he seemed to have forgotten
all save his own defeat. One afternoon he had come home, silent and
preoccupied, and had moodily chosen to sit alone, staring out the
window, though seemingly oblivious to the wonder and beauty of the
October day, dying, like the year, in serene and majestic dignity. His
immovable figure, there in the gloom, gradually oppressed her, got on
her nerves, and at last drew her irresistibly into the room where he
was. She sat down quietly, without disturbing him, in the hope that he
would speak. She looked at him long, but he did not speak, he did not
move. Finally this attitude became insupportable, and she at length
broke the stillness.
"What is it, Jerome?" she asked.
"What?" he said.
"What is the matter?"
"Nothing is the matter," he answered in an aggrieved tone that
altogether belied his words.
"But there is," she insisted, quite in the old way. "You are blue."
He was silent a moment longer, in an ugly reluctance to speak, and then,
"Well," he said, savagely, "debts, if you want to know."
She sighed. The old sordid struggle after all! He waited awhile longer,
desiring her to coax him out of his mood, but she said nothing, and at
last he was impelled to speak once more himself.
"I don't know what we are going to do," he said, "my creditors, now
that I've been beaten, are making my office a rendezvous."
He spoke bitterly, as debtors do. He had leaned forward, his elbows on
his knees, his chin in his palms, and he looked more gloomily than ever
out of the window. The light was just sufficient to mark the outlines
of his really fine head, while the shadows of evening softened the
lines in his face, the harsh, unpleasant lines that a few years had
drawn there. She studied his profile, her eye caressing his curls, the
curls she remembered so well--remembered, because she had a troubled
sense of thinking now of Jerome as in the past. She gazed until the
changes wrought by the short years of their common life passed away,
and she saw again the Jerome of old--her own, her lost ideal.... If
he had only gone down in some glorious conflict, through some mighty
sacrifice, some great devotion to principle! Why had he failed? Had
she not tried to do all that a wife could to help and guide him? If he
had married some other woman, some woman of courser fiber, who would
not have tried to keep him continually up to such high ideals? She
paused, some sudden shock smote her, she felt her face grow cold and
pale. Another woman married to Jerome Garwood! She caught her breath,
her face burned as the blood rushed back to her cheeks again, and then
suddenly, impulsively, she spoke, as much to herself, it seemed, as to
her husband:
"I _do_ love you still, Jerome!"
Her heart beat with a new fierce joy. A revelation had come to her,
a revelation that had solved her problem in an instant, a thing her
reason had not been able to do in long months. She loved him still!
There was the solution to her riddle of life! And this, this was the
auspicious, the psychological moment, come at last! She waited in agony
for him to speak, she leaned forward expectantly, and he half turned
his head. Her eyes widened, almost flamed forth, as she felt, to meet
his there in the darkness that had suddenly become all light for her.
And then he laughed, a little laugh, that came harsh on the stillness,
and he said:
"Why of course you do."
Her eyes fell. He took it then, quite in the old matter of course way!
She turned her face aside, sick with disappointment.
But the revelation of that passionate moment had not been lost. It
was to her, sure and certain. She could not doubt it. That Jerome had
taken it all as he had could make no difference now to her. For the
revelation had solved her problem, made her duty clear, and that was
enough. The results of the solution had not been those of her heart's
desire, but she could wait for that, for now she beheld the light of a
new theory, a new ideal, that quickly glowed into an incandescence that
illumined her whole soul. Loving Jerome still, she must live for him
still, and this without any regard to what attitude he might take.
Her own happiness was of no importance; it must come, if at all, as
a secondary and indirect result. The old ideal and the old ambition
had been, after all, but selfish, and so had failed not only of
realization, but of that nobler success that comes through failure in
the high endeavors of life. She saw it all clearly now; when they had
together dreamed of a career, it was not with the idea of being of real
help to those about them, but merely of lifting themselves to some
place that would distinguish them artificially from those about them.
And in time, pondering on her relations to others in the world besides
Jerome, she found that what was true of her relation to him was true of
her relations to them; that her duty was to live for them as well as
for him.
Here was at last a worthy plan of existence, an ideal, not of self,
but service. It was simple when she put it to herself in this literal
way, so very simple that it was almost trite, yet she had a conviction
that it was none the less mightily true. She would not judge Jerome,
but love him; she would not expose his faults, but cover them with a
mantle of charity; a mantle so wide that it would cover as well all
others groping through the world with their sins and their sufferings,
their pitiable failures and their lamentable mistakes, and if, even
by the slow and loving work of years, she could win Jerome in time to
this new ideal that had arisen out of her darkness as the light of an
autumn morning without clouds after long days of rain, then, indeed,
could his talents worthily be devoted to the people he already thought
he loved. Now she had found the faith in life so necessary to her
existence. It was a new and better faith, and she could wait long and
patiently, if need be, for its complete fulfilment.
Under the stimulus of this new-found faith in life, in an almost
pathetic determination to be practical--since the sentimental seemed
to be denied her--she decided first that their affairs be placed at
once on a secure foundation. So with a touch of her father's own
uncompromising rigor in business matters, she relentlessly cast up all
their accounts, and if she winced when the amount of Jerome's debts
stared her in the face, she nevertheless bravely set about paying them
off, devoting to the purpose all her own income, now grown small with
the periodical return of hard times. And then, last heroism of all,
she resolved that they must give up their old home. Jerome demurred a
little, but presently acquiesced.
He was interested anew in affairs, he had perhaps had revelations of
his own, and if he did not have resolutions, he nevertheless had hopes.
The campaign was on again, and, in a spirit of what he called party
loyalty--as one who, winning or losing, honorably lives up to all the
rules of the game--he was stumping the district, and making speeches
for the ticket with as much of his old fire as if he had been on the
ticket himself. Long before election his old self-satisfaction had
returned, he was as full of splendid schemes as a bumblebee, and if
his disinterestedness was not so apparent after election, when he felt
that his chances of being appointed to a territorial judgeship were
increasing more and more as the short session of Congress drew near,
it may have been discovered in the fact that, as an alternative, he
had revived his old project of going to Chicago to practise law. If he
got the territorial judgeship, they would have to move West; in either
event, he said, it did not matter much where they lived for the time
being. He thought that if they went to Chicago he might go to Congress
from some of the Chicago districts--it was not hard to get into
politics there. But Emily only smiled.
She found through Morton, a tenant for the old home. She sent away the
maids, even the nurse, for whom the children cried, and Jasper, who
cried himself, until his very despair drove him to refuse to accept the
discharge at all. And then she found a smaller house.
The last load of furniture had rumbled away in a covered van that
afternoon; as the early twilight came she gave a final look into the
empty corners of the old home, picking up little things that had been
overlooked, and then, with an ache at the heart for its emptiness and
loneliness, she bade it farewell. The moving had been an ordeal. She
had had all the care of it, though Jerome's mother had helped, but
beyond this was the spiritual agony of coming across old things she had
not seen for years, things of her childhood, things of her girlhood;
the dress she had worn when first she met Jerome--he had told her to
preserve it, though he did not know where it was--things, too, of her
mother's--a trying time for a soul already so heavily laden.
Now, hurrying along in the gloom of this November evening, she glanced
at the big houses of the prosperous, and they repelled her with the
flat austerity of their own provincial exclusiveness. As she advanced,
these residences that had the effect of casting her off, gradually gave
way to homes, rows of cottages, decreasing in size and importance; but
as they grew smaller, Emily observed that they grew more companionable.
Lights were beginning to show in their windows, the men were getting in
from their work, and she could hear the homely sounds of evening chores.
By the time she reached the humbler street where she was henceforth
to live, she felt a sympathy with these unambitious homes, finding a
welcome, as it were, in the honest faces they presented in the dusk.
She gave them back a brave little smile, reflecting her wish that she
might find the peace they seemed to shelter. Pursued along those silent
streets by the memories of the old home, she sought refuge in planning
the furnishing of the new, mentally compressing the too abundant
furniture into the smaller compass with which they must now content
themselves.
And in her determination to begin anew, she simulated for the sake of
her own courage the pride and joy of a bride's anticipation in setting
up housekeeping. Were they not really beginning after all? Had not the
years since their marriage been years of make-shift and make-believe?
Were not those years even now falling away behind her, while brighter
ones rose before? In the spring she would have a little garden; she
could imagine John Ethan and his little sister playing among the
flowers that would riot there, their little heads bobbing in the yellow
sunlight. At the thought of the children she quickened her steps.
The house at last came into sight, standing in a small yard with
a low picket fence about it. Some boy was passing by, showing his
neighborliness by rattling a stick along the palings. John Ethan must
have known her step, light and hurried as it was, for as she turned in
at the gate the door of the house opened, and he stood there in the
light that came from behind him. He was waiting for her. He called to
her to hurry, and she ran up the walk, caught him in her arms, and
hugged his little body to her breast. The baby bad gone to sleep,
too tired to await her mother's coming. The grandmother was cooking
supper amidst the disorder of the furniture and the boxes that had been
crowded into the kitchen. As Emily held her boy to her breast, she felt
the tears welling to her eyes, but she told herself that this was not
the time for tears, for here began that new unselfish life in which she
hoped at some far off distant day to find the peace and the happiness
of which she had dreamed.
THE END
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note."
_Dr. F. W. Gunsaulus, President Armour Institute, says_:
"Mr. Goss writes with the truthfulness of light. He has told a story
in which the fact of sin is illuminated with the utmost truthfulness
and the fact of redemption is portrayed with extraordinary power.
There are lines of greatness in the book which I shall never forget."
_President M. W. Stryker, Hamilton College, says_:
"It is a victory in writing for one whose head seems at last to have
matched his big human heart. There is ten times as much of reality in
it as there is in 'David Harum,' which does not value lightly that
admirable charcoal sketch."
Price, $1.50
The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_
"THE MERRIEST NOVEL OF MANY,
MANY MOONS."
MY LADY PEGGY
GOES TO TOWN
By FRANCES AYMAR MATHEWS
The Daintiest and Most Delightful Book
of the Season.
A heroine almost too charming to be true is Peggy, and it were a
churlish reader who is not, at the end of the first chapter, prostrate
before her red slippers.--_Washington Post._
To make a comparison would be to rank "My Lady Peggy" with "Monsieur
Beaucaire" in points of attraction, and to applaud as heartily as that
delicate romance, this picture of the days "When patches nestled o'er
sweet lips at chocolate times."--_N. Y. Mail and Express._
12 mo. Beautifully illustrated and bound.
Price, $1.25 net
The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_
"AS CRISP AND CLEAN CUT
AS A NEW MINTAGE."
THE
PUPPET CROWN
BY HAROLD MacGRATH
A princess rarely beautiful; a duchess magnificent and heartless; a
villain revengeful and courageous; a hero youthful, humorous, fearless
and truly American;--such are the principal characters of this
delightful story.--_Syracuse Post-Standard._
Harold MacGrath has attained the highest point achievable in recent
fiction. We have the climax of romance and adventure in "The Puppet
Crown."--_The Philadelphia North American._
Superior to most of the great successes.--_St. Paul Pioneer Press._
"The Puppet Crown" is a profusion of cleverness.--_Baltimore American._
Challenges comparison with authors whose names have become
immortal.--_Chicago American._
Latest entry in the list of winners.--_Cleveland World._
With illustrations by R. Martine Reay
12mo. Price, $1.50
The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_
"AN ADMIRABLE SOCIAL STUDY"
THE FALL OF
THE CURTAIN
By HAROLD BEGBIE
The purpose of this brilliant story of modern English life is to show
that a human being, well brought-up, carefully trained in the outward
appearances of religion, with a keen intellectual perception of the
difference between right and wrong, may still not have goodness,
and that ambition may easily become the dominating force in such a
character. So the book may be called a purpose novel, but in reading
it, one no more thinks of applying so discredited an epithet to it
than one would think of applying it to "Vanity Fair."
The author possesses an admirable style, clear, unaffected, strong.
To the discriminating public, the book is certain to give far more
pleasure than that public usually gets from a new novel.
With a Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert
Cloth, 12 mo. Ornamental, $1.25 Net.
Postage, 12 Cents
The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_
FULL _of_ INCIDENT, ACTION & COLOR
LIKE
ANOTHER HELEN
By GEORGE HORTON
Mr. Horton's powerful romance stands in a new field and brings an
almost unknown world in reality before the reader--the world of
conflict between Greek and Turk.
The island of Crete seems real and genuine after reading this book;
not a mere spot on the map. The tragic and pathetic troubles of this
people are told with sympathetic force.
Mr. Horton employs a vivid style that keeps the interest alive and
many passages are filled with delicate poetic feeling.
Things happen and the story moves. The characters are well conceived
and are human and convincing. Beyond question Mr. Horton's fine story
is destined to take high rank among the books of the day.
With illustrations by C. M. Relyea
12mo. Cloth bound
Price, $1.50
_The Chicago Times-Herald says_:
"Here are chapters that are Stephen Crane plus sympathy; chapters of
illuminated description fragrant with the atmosphere of art."
The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_
"A CHRONICLE OF MARVELS"
THE FIRST MEN
IN THE MOON
By H. G. WELLS
Author of "The War of the Worlds" and "Tales of Time
and Space."
Mr. Wells writes to entertain and in this tale of the invention of
"cavorite," and the subsequent remarkable journey made to the moon
by its inventor, he has succeeded beyond measure in alternately
astounding, convincing and delighting his readers. Told in a
straightforward way, with an air of ingenuousness that disarms doubt,
the story chronicles the most marvelous discoveries and adventures on
the mysterious planet. Mr. Hering's many illustrations are admirable.
Altogether the book is one of the most original and entertaining
volumes that has appeared in many a day.
Profusely Illustrated by E. Hering
12mo. Cloth, $1.50
The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_
"AN INDIANA LOVE STORY"
ROSALYNDE'S
LOVERS
By MAURICE THOMPSON
Author of "Alice of Old Vincennes"
As Mr. Thompson avers, this is "only a love story," but it is a story
of such sweetness and wholesome life that it will at once claim a
permanent home in our affections. The love of nature, so prominent
a characteristic of Mr. Thompson, is reflected throughout and the
thunderstorm and following gleam of sun, the country garden and
southern lake are each in turn invested with a personality that wins
our instant sympathy. Rosalynde Banderet is winsome and artless, her
lovers are human and manly, and her final happiness is ours. Mr.
Peirson's many pictures are entirely worthy.
With many Illustrations and Decorations by
G. Alden Peirson
Ornamental 12mo. Cloth Bound, $1.50
The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_
ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL HISTORICAL
NOVEL
THE BLACK
WOLF'S BREED
By HARRIS DICKSON
_From the Boston Globe_:
"A vigorous tale of France in the old and new world during the reign
of Louis XIV."
_From the Philadelphia Press_:
"As delightfully seductive as certain mint-flavored beverages they
make down South."
_From the Los Angeles Herald_:
"The sword-play is great, even finer than in the pictures in 'To Have
and To Hold.'"
_From the San Francisco Chronicle_:
"As fine a piece of sustained adventure as has appeared in recent
fiction."
_From the St. Louis Globe-Democrat_:
"There is action, vivid description and intensely dramatic situations."
_From the Indianapolis News_:
"So full of tender love-making, of gallant fighting that one regrets
it's no longer."
Illustrated by C. M. Relyea. Price $1.50
The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_
"IN LONDON OF LONG AGO"
THE
FICKLE WHEEL
By HENRY THEW STEPHENSON
In this tale of merry England, of the time when Shakespeare jested
and Ben Jonson blustered, Mr. Stephenson has painted for us a picture
informing and above all entertaining. His is not a story of counts
and crowns, but of ever interesting common people. Without seeming to
do so the author shows us many interesting bits of the life of the
day. We go to Paul's walk, we see Shakespeare at the Globe theatre
and other such glimpses of old time London are deftly added to our
experiences. Throughout the book is an evanescent charm, a spirit of
wholesome gaiety. It is well worth while.
With illustrations by C. M. Relyea
Cloth, Ornamental, 12 mo. Price, $1.50
The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_
A FINE STORY
OF THE COWBOY AT HIS BEST
WITH
HOOPS _of_ STEEL
By FLORENCE FINCH KELLY
"The friends though hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel"
_From the San Francisco Chronicle_:
"Western men and women will read it because it paints faithfully the
life which they know so well, and because it gives us three big, manly
fellows, fine types of the cowboy at his best. Eastern readers will be
attracted by its splendid realism."
_From Julian Hawthorne_:
"For my own part, I finished it in one day, and dreamt it over again
that night. And I am an old hand, heaven knows."
_From the Denver Times_:
"Mrs. Kelly's characters stand out from the background of the New
Mexican plains, desert and mountain with all the distinctness of a
Remington sketch."
With 6 illustrations, in color, by Dan Smith
Price, $1.50
The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_
VIGOROUS, ELEMENTAL, DRAMATIC
A HEART
OF FLAME
The story of a Master Passion
BY CHARLES FLEMING EMBREE
Author of "A Dream of a Throne."
The men and women in this story are children of the soil. Their
strength is their nearness to nature. Their minds are vigorous, their
bodies powerful, their passions elemental, their courage sublime. They
are loyal in friendship, persistent in enmity, determined in purpose.
The story is a story of great wrongs and of supreme love. It is
done in black and white, with few strokes, but they are masterly.
The shadows at the back are somber but the value of contrast is
appreciated for the vivid high light in the foreground.
It is a work of art--powerful, convincing and abiding. Powerful,
because true to life; convincing, because it has the saving touch of
humor; abiding because love, like "A Heart of Flame," prevails in the
end.
With illustrations by Dan Smith
12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50.
The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_
"DIFFICULT TO FORGET"
A FEARSOME
RIDDLE
By MAX EHRMAN
This mystery story, based on the theory of the arithmetical rhythm
of time, contains much of the same fascination that attaches to the
tales of Poe. Simply told, yet dramatic and powerful in its unique
conception, it has a convincing ring that is most impressive. The
reader can not evade a haunting conviction that this wonderful
experiment must in reality have taken place. Delightful to read,
difficult to forget, the book must evoke a wide discussion.
With Pictures by Virginia Keep
12 mo. Cloth, $1.00
The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_
A STORY TOLD BY A REAL STORYTELLER
A SON OF
AUSTERITY
By GEORGE KNIGHT
Mr. Knight has created a real atmosphere for his men and women to
breathe, and his men and women take deep breaths. They are alive, they
are human, they are real.
He has a delightful story to tell and knows how to tell it. It is a
story of human life, of possible people in possible situations, living
out their little span of life in that state in which it has pleased
God to call them.
The reader realizes at once that Mr. Knight is a man who served his
seven years of apprenticeship before opening a shop on his own account.
The deftness and charm of his literary style, combined with the
absorbing interest of the story, can not but prove a delight to every
reader.
With a frontispiece by Harrison Fisher
12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50
_The Liverpool Mercury says_:
"This is a book far removed from the ordinary mass of featureless
fiction. There is no gainsaying the strength of characterization and
the command of English language."
The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Minor changes have been made to regularize hyphenation and to correct
typesetters' errors.
Words that were typeset in italics in the paper edition of this book
have been noted with an underscore (_) preceding and following them.