Chapter III.

Striking the Flag.

The events narrated in our last chapter took place early in November, and

it was not till the following March that the astonished friends of Horace

Rutherford saw him reappear amongst them as suddenly and as unexpectedly

as he had departed. "Business of importance" was the sole explanation he

vouchsafed to those who questioned him respecting the motive of his brief

European tour; and with that answer public curiosity was perforce obliged

to content itself. Society had, in fact, grown weary of discussing the

affairs of the Rutherford family. Clement Rutherford's _mesalliance_, his

mother's sudden illness at that memorable dinner-party, her subsequent

seclusion from the world, and Horace's inexplicable absence, had all

afforded food for the insatiable appetite of the scandal-mongers. Then

Gossip grew eloquent respecting the flirtations and "fast" manners of

Clement Rutherford's wife, and whispered that the old lady's seizure had

been either apoplexy or paralysis, brought on by her distress of mind at

her son's marriage, and that she had never been herself since. Next, the

elegant establishment of the newly-wedded pair on Twenty-sixth street,

with its gorgeous furniture and costly appointments, furnished a theme for

much conversation, and doubts were expressed as to whether the "Upper Ten"

would honor with its august presence the ball which Mrs. Clement

Rutherford proposed giving on Shrove Tuesday, which in that year came

about the middle of March. But as to that, it was generally conceded that

they would. Youth, beauty, wealth and the shadow of an old family name

could cover a multitude of such sins as rapid manners, desperate

flirtations and a questionable origin; and notwithstanding her fastness,

and, worse still, her _ci-devant_ governess-ship, Mrs. Clement Rutherford

was a decided social success.

On the day succeeding that oh which he had arrived, Horace made his

appearance at his brother's house. Clement had not heard of his return,

and received him with a cordiality strikingly at variance with his usual

manner.

"Come into the library," he said, after the first greetings had been

exchanged. "I have some fine cigars for you to try, and you can tell me

something about your travels."

"Thank you, Clement: I believe I must decline your offer. I have a message

for your wife: can I see her?"

A cloud swept over the brow of the elder brother.

"I suppose you can," he said, coldly, looking at his watch as he spoke.

"Two o'clock. She took breakfast about half an hour ago, so she is

probably at home. You had better go up stairs to her _boudoir_, as she

calls it, and Christine, her maid, will tell her that you wish to see

her."

He turned away, and was about to leave the room when Horace caught his

hand.

"Clement! brother! Answer me one question: Are you happy in your married

life?"

"Go ask the scandal-mongers of New York," was the bitter reply: "_they_

are eloquent respecting the perfection of my connubial bliss."

"If she had been a kind and affectionate wife, if she had made him happy,"

muttered Horace as he ascended the stairs, "my task would have been a

harder one. Now my duty is clear, and my course lies smooth and straight

before, me."

The room into which he was ushered by Christine, the pretty French maid,

was a perfect marvel of elegance and extravagance. It was very small, and

on every part of it had been lavished all that the combined efforts of

taste and expenditure could achieve. The walls had been painted in fresco

by an eminent Italian artist, and bevies of rosy Cupids, trailing after

them garlands of many-hued flowers, disported on a background of a

delicate green tint. The same tints and design were repeated in the

Aubusson carpet, and on the fine Gobelin tapestry which covered the few

chairs and the one luxurious couch that formed the useful furniture of the

tiny apartment. Étagères of carved and gilded wood occupied each corner,

and, together with the low mantelshelf (which was upheld by two dancing

nymphs in Carrara marble), were crowded with costly trifles in Bohemian

glass, Dresden and Sèvres porcelain, gilded bronze, carved ivory and

Parian ware. An easel, drawn toward the centre of the room, supported the

one painting that it contained, the designs on the walls being unsuited

for the proper display of pictures. This one picture had evidently been

selected on account of the contrast which it afforded to the gay coloring

and _riante_ style of the decorations. It was a superb marine view by

Hamilton--a cloudy sunset above a stormy sea, the lurid sinking sun

flinging streaks of blood-red light upon the leaden waters that, in the

foreground, foamed and dashed themselves wildly against the rocks of a

barren and precipitous shore.

Horace stood lost in contemplation before the easel, when the door opened

and his sister-in-law entered. He turned to greet her, and her beauty,

enhanced as it was by the elegance of her attire, drew from him an

involuntary glance of admiration. Her dress was an exemplification of how

much splendor may be lavished on a morning-costume without rendering it

absolutely and ridiculously inappropriate. She wore a robe of

turquoise-blue Indian cashmere, edged around the long train and flowing

sleeves with a broad border of that marvelous gold embroidery which only

Eastern fingers can execute or Eastern imaginations devise. A band of the

same embroidery confined the robe around her slender, supple waist, and

showed to advantage the perfection of her figure. A brooch and long

ear-pendants of lustreless yellow gold, and a fan of azure silk with

gilded sticks, were the adjuncts to this costume, whose rich hues and

gorgeous effects would have crushed a less brilliant and stylish-looking

woman, but which were wonderfully becoming to its graceful wearer.

"Welcome home, Horace!" she said in that low sweet voice which was one of

her most potent charms. "How kind it is of you to pay me a visit so soon

after your return!"

She placed herself on the couch and motioned to him to take a seat near

her. He drew up his chair, and a short, embarrassed pause succeeded.

Mrs. Rutherford toyed with her fan and stole glances from under her long

black lashes at her visitor, who sat twisting one of his gloves and

wishing most ardently that Providence had entrusted the painful task

before him to some one of a more obdurate and less chivalrous nature.

Wearied of silence, the lady spoke at last.

"Have you nothing of interest respecting your travels to tell me?" she

asked.

Her voice seemed to break the spell which paralyzed him. He turned toward

her with the look of one who nerves himself up to take a desperate

resolution:

"Yes: I have a story to relate to you, and one of more than common

interest."

"Really!" She yawned behind her fan. "Excuse me, but I was at Mrs.

Houdon's ball last evening, and the 'German' was kept up till five o'clock

this morning. I am wretchedly tired. Now do go on with your story: I have

no doubt but that I shall find it amusing, but do not be much surprised if

I fall asleep."

"I think you will find it interesting, and I have no fear of its putting

you to sleep. But you must make me one promise. I am but a poor narrator,

and you must engage not to interrupt me."

"I have no hesitation in promising to remain perfectly quiet, no matter

how startling your incidents or how vivid your descriptions may be."

She leaned back among the cushions with another stifled yawn and shaded

her eyes with her fan. Without heeding the veiled impertinence of her

manner, Horace commenced his narrative:

"Some twenty-five years ago a friendless, penniless Englishwoman died at

one of the cheap boarding-schools in Dieppe, where she had officiated for

some time as English teacher and general drudge. She left behind her a

little girl about five years of age--a pretty, engaging child, whose

beauty and infantile fascinations so won the heart of Madame Tellier, the

proprietress of the establishment, that she decided to take charge of the

little creature and educate her, her project being to fit her for the post

of English teacher in her school. But the pretty child grew up to be a

beautiful but unprincipled girl, with an inborn passion for indolence and

luxury. At the age of seventeen she eloped from the school with a young

Parisian gentleman, who had been spending the summer months at one of the

seaside hotels in Dieppe, and her benefactress saw her and heard of her no

more.

"We will pass over the events of the next few years. It would hardly

interest you to follow, as I did, each step by which the heroine of my

history progressed ever downward on the path of vice. We find her at last

traveling in Italy under the protection of the Count von Erlenstein, an

Austrian noble of great wealth and dissolute character. She has cast aside

the name she once bore, and, anticipating the jewel-borrowed cognomens of

Cora Pearl and La Reine Topaze, she adopts a title from the profusion of

pink coral jewelry which she habitually wears, and Rose Sherbrooke is

known as Rose Coral."

Horace paused. A short, sharp sound broke the momentary silence: it was

caused by the snapping of one of the gilded fan-sticks under the pressure

of the white, rigid fingers that clasped it. But the listener kept her

face hidden, and but for that convulsive motion the speaker might have

fancied that she slept, so silent and motionless did she remain. After a

short pause Horace continued:

"The attachment of Count von Erlenstein proved to be a lasting one, and we

find Rose Coral at a later period installed in a luxurious establishment

in Vienna, and one of the reigning queens of that realm of many

sovereigns, the _demi-monde_ of the gay capital of Austria. But the count

falls ill; his sickness speedily assumes a dangerous form; his death

deprives Rose Coral of her splendor; and the sunny streets of Vienna know

her fair face no more. I will not retrace for you, as I could do, each

step in her rapid descent from luxury to poverty, from splendor to vice,

from celebrity to ruin. But one day she makes her appearance, under the

name of Rhoda Steele, on board the steamship America, bound for New York.

The state-room which she occupies is shared by a young girl named Marion

Nugent, whose future career is to be that of a governess in the United

States. On the first night out one of the occupants of the state-room is

taken suddenly ill and dies, the corpse is committed to the deep, and it

is reported throughout the ship that the name of the deceased is Rhoda

Steele. The tale was false: it was Marion Nugent who died--it was Rose

Sherbrooke, _alias_ Rose Coral, _alias_ Rhoda Steele, who lived to rob the

dead girl of her effects and to assume her name!"

The broken fan was flung violently to the floor, and Mrs. Rutherford

sprang to her feet, her face livid with passion and her blue eyes blazing

with a steel-like light.

"How dare you come here to assert such falsehoods?" she cried. "You have

always hated me--you and all the rest of your haughty family--because it

pleased Clement Rutherford to marry me--me, a penniless governess. But I

am your sister-in-law, and I _demand _ that you treat me with proper

respect. You came here to-day simply to insult me. Well, sir, I will

summon my husband, and he shall protect me from your insolence."

She turned toward the door as she spoke, but he motioned her back with an

imperative and scornful gesture.

"Softly, Rose Coral," he said, with a sneer: "the manners of the Quartier

Brèda are not much to my taste, nor do they suit the character you have

been pleased to assume. Do you think me so void of common sense as to

return home without full proof of your identity? I have in my possession a

large colored photograph of you, taken some years ago by Hildebrandt of

Vienna, and endorsed by him on the back with a certificate stating that it

is an accurate likeness of the celebrated Rose Coral. Secondly, I have

brought home with me two witnesses--one is Jane Sheldon, late housekeeper

for the Rev. Walter Nugent, and formerly nurse to the deceased Marion

Nugent; and the other is a French hairdresser who lived many years in

Vienna, and who, for several months, daily arranged the profuse tresses of

Rose Coral. One will prove who you are _not_, and the other will as

certainly prove who you _are_."

"Who I _was_" she said, defiantly. "I will deny it no longer: I am Rose

Sherbrooke, once known as Rose Coral, and, what is more to the purpose, I

am the wife of Clement Rutherford. Have a care, my brother Horace, lest

you reveal to the world that your immaculate relatives have been touching

pitch of the blackest hue and greatest tenacity. Prove me to be the vilest

of my sex, I remain none the less a wedded wife--your brother's wife--and

I defy you. The game is played out, and I have won it."

She threw herself back in her chair and cast on him a glance of insolent

disdain. Horace Rutherford looked at her with a scornful smile.

"The game is _not_ played out," he said, calmly. "One card remains in my

hand, and I produce it. It is the Ace of Diamonds, and its title is The

Rose of the Morning."

A livid paleness overspread Mrs. Rutherford's features, and a stifled cry

escaped from her lips. She half rose from her seat, but, seeming to

recollect herself, she sank back and covered her face with her hands.

Horace continued, after a momentary pause:

"My investigations into the history of the Count Wilhelm von Erlenstein

during the last years of his life revealed the fact that he had lost the

most valuable of the jewels of his family. It had been stolen. It was a

pink diamond of great size and beauty, known to gem-connoisseurs by the

name of The Rose of the Morning--one of those remarkable stones which have

a history and a pedigree, and which are as well known by reputation to

diamond-fanciers as are Raphael's Transfiguration and the Apollo Belvidere

to the lovers of art. This gem was worn by Count Wilhelm as a clasp to the

plume in his toque at a fancy ball given by one of the Metternich family,

at which he appeared in the costume of Henri III. of France. He afterward,

with culpable carelessness, placed it, amongst his studs, pins,

watch-chains and other similar bijouterie, in a small steel cabinet which

stood in his bed-chamber. His illness and the dismissal of Rose Coral

occurred soon after the fancy ball in question, and it was not till his

heir, the present count, had been for some time in possession of the

estates that it was discovered that the great diamond was missing. It was

not to be found, and suspicion immediately fell upon the late count's

valet, a Frenchman named Antoine Lasalle; who was found to have been

mysteriously possessed of a large sum of money after the count's death. He

was arrested, and it was conclusively proved that he had stolen a number

of valuable trinkets from his dying master, but still no trace of The Rose

of the Morning could be discovered, and Lasalle strenuously denied all

knowledge respecting it. The family offered large rewards for its

recovery, and the detectives of all the large cities of Europe have been

for some time on the alert to discover it, but in vain. As soon as I heard

this story, I thought that I could make a tolerably shrewd guess as to the

whereabouts of the missing jewel; and I caused investigations to be set on

foot in New York by a trusty agent, which resulted in the discovery that

The Rose of the Morning had been sold some six months before to a jeweler

in Maiden lane for about one-twenty-fifth of its value, the peculiar tint

of the stone, and the purchaser's ignorance of the estimation in which it

is held by the gem-fanciers of Europe, having militated against the

magnitude of the valuation set upon it. It was secured for me at a

comparatively trifling price. The person who sold it to the jeweler some

six months ago, in spite of a partial disguise and an assumed name, was

easy to recognize, from the description given, as that lady of many names,

Mrs. John Archer's governess. Now, Rose Coral, what say you? You may be

Mrs. Clement Rutherford, my brother's lawful wife, but you are not the

less a thief and a criminal, for whom the laws have terrible punishment

and bitter degradation."

"This is but a poor invention: where are your proofs?" she cried, looking

up as she spoke, but her faltering voice and quivering lips contradicted

her words.

"Here is my chief witness." He drew off his left-hand glove as he spoke,

and extended his hand toward her. On the third finger blazed the beautiful

gem of which he had spoken, its great size and purity fully displayed in

the pale afternoon sunlight that flashed back in rosy radiance from its

bright-tinted depths.

"It is almost too large to wear as a ring," he said with great coolness,

looking at the jewel, "but I wish it to run no further risks till I can

transfer it to its lawful owner, which will be as soon as it has played

its talismanic part by freeing my brother from his impostor-wife."

The lady rose from her seat, pale, calm and resolved.

"Further insults are useless, sir," she said. "The game is ended now, and

you have won it. What is it that you wish me to do?"

"You must sail for Europe in one of next week's steamers, leaving behind

you such a confession of guilt as will enable my brother to procure a

divorce without revealing the shameful fact that he was the innocent means

of introducing an impostor--a _ci-devant_ lorette--to his family and

friends as his wife. Better this scandal of an elopement than the horror

of having such a story made public. An income amply sufficient for your

wants will be settled upon you, on condition that you never return to the

United States, and never, in any way, proclaim the fact that Mrs. Clement

Rutherford and Rose Coral were one and the same person."

"I accept your conditions," she said, wearily. "I will go, never to

return. Now leave me. But stay: will you not answer me one question?"

"I will, certainly."

"Who was it that discovered my secret?"

"My mother--my blind mother. Some years ago, before she lost her sight, I

accompanied her on a short European tour, in which we visited England,

France, Switzerland, and finally Italy. While we were at Rome I fell ill

with the fever of the country, and my physicians gave orders that as soon

as I was well enough to travel I should leave Italy for a more bracing

climate. We had not visited Naples, and I was anxious that my mother

should not return home without seeing the wonders of that city; so as soon

as I became convalescent I prevailed upon her to leave me in the care of

some friends and to join a party who were going thither. During her stay

she went frequently to the opera. One evening she was greatly disturbed by

the loud talking and laughing of some persons in the box next to the one

she occupied, and she was much struck with the beauty, the brilliant

toilette and the boisterous conduct of one of the female members of the

party. She inquired the name of the person she had thus remarked. It was

yourself, and she learned not only your name, but your whole history. When

at her own dinner-table she heard the sweet and singular laugh that had so

struck her on that occasion, the sensitiveness of hearing peculiar to the

blind caused her to recognize the sound at once; and the description which

I afterward gave her of your personal appearance only changed torturing

doubt into agonizing certainty."

"Thanks for your courtesy: I will detain you no longer."

Horace bowed and approached the door. Suddenly, as if moved by a sudden

impulse, he turned back.

"Believe me, this task has been a hard one," he said, earnestly. "And

remember, if hereafter you may need pecuniary aid, do not hesitate to

apply to me. For Heaven's sake, do not return to the life you once led.

There was one redeeming feature in the imposture which you practiced: it

showed that some yearning for a pure name and an innocent life was yet

possible to you."

"I want no sermons," she answered, abruptly. "Only leave me at peace. Go:

I am sick of the sight of you."

As he closed the door he cast one parting glance on the room and its

occupant. She stood leaning against the back of a large arm-chair, her

clasped hands resting on the top, and her white, rigid face set in the

fixed calmness of total despair.

Thus left alone, she remained standing for some time as motionless as

though she were a marble statue and not a living woman. Suddenly she

seemed to take some desperate resolve: she threw back her head with a

bitter, mirthless laugh, and going to the bell she rang it. Her maid

quickly appeared.

"I have a wretched headache, Christine," she said. "I shall not come down

to dinner, and do not disturb me till nine o'clock: that will give me time

enough to dress for Mrs. Winchester's ball. I will wear the pale-blue

satin and my point-lace tunic. Be sure you change the white roses that

loop it for pink ones, and lay out my parure of pearls and diamonds, and

my point-lace fan and handkerchief. Now bring me the two phials that stand

on the third shelf of the closet in my bed-chamber."

Christine departed on her errand and soon returned, bringing with her two

bottles, the smallest of which was labeled "Solution of Morphia--POISON.

Dose for an adult, ten drops;" while the largest Was simply inscribed

"Sulphuric Ether." These she placed on the chimney-piece, and then

proceeded to arrange the cushions of the lounge and to draw the curtains.

"I will now leave madame to her repose," she said. "Does madame need

anything more?"

"No, I shall want nothing more," was the reply. The door closed upon the

maid's retreating form, and Mrs. Rutherford instantly shot the bolt.

She cast a sad and wistful glance around the dainty room and on its

glittering contents. "_J'etais si bien ici_," she said regretfully. "I had

found here the existence which suited me, and now the end has come. It is

not in my nature to remain satisfied with a life of poverty and

respectability, and I will not return to one of degradation and vice. But,

after all, what does it matter? My fate would have found me sooner or

later, and this soft couch is better than a hospital bed or the slabs of

La Morgue: this draught is more soothing than the cold waters of the

Thames or the Seine. Life is no longer a game that is worth the candle:

let us extinguish the lights and put the cards away."

She took up the phial of morphia, drew the little sofa nearer to the

fireplace and extended herself upon it. The daylight faded from the sky

and night came, and with the night came sleep--a sleep whose dream was of

Eternity, and whose wakening light would be the dawn of the resurrection

morning.

"Accidental death" was the verdict of the coroner and the newspapers, and,

in fact, of the world in general--a conclusion much assisted by the

evidence of Christine, who testified that her mistress was in the habit of

using narcotics and anaesthetics in large quantities to relieve the pain

of the neuralgic headaches from which she was a constant sufferer. Society

said, "How sad! Dreadful, is it not?" and went on its way--not exactly

rejoicing, for the death of Mrs. Rutherford deprived its members of her

long-promised, long-talked-of Shrove-Tuesday ball, and consequently the

gay world mourned her loss very sincerely for a short time; in fact, till

a well-known leader of fashion announced her intention of giving a

fancy-dress party on the night thus left vacant, whereupon Society was

consoled, and Mrs. Rutherford's sad fate was forgotten.

Only two persons--Horace Rutherford and his mother--suspected that her

death was not an accidental one; but they guarded their secret carefully,

and Clement Rutherford will never learn that his dead wife was other than

the innocent English girl she represented herself to be. Walter Nugent

wrote a pathetic letter to Mrs. Rutherford, begging that a lock of his

lost and now forgiven darling's hair might be sent to him; and it cost

Horace a sharp pang of regret when he substituted for the black, wavy

tress furnished by Clement a golden ringlet purchased from one of the

leading hairdressers of New York.

"Heaven forgive me!" he said to himself, remorsefully, as he sealed the

little packet; "but I really think that this is one of the cases wherein

one cannot be blamed for not revealing the truth."

A few months later, Horace Rutherford stood in Greenwood Cemetery

contemplating with curiosity and interest the inscription on a

recently-erected monument of pure white marble.

"Sacred to the memory of Marion Nugent, beloved wife of Clement

Rutherford," he read. "Well, this is consistent at least. She wears the

disguise of a virtuous woman in her very tomb. Marion Nugent rests beneath

the waves of the Atlantic ocean, and here Rose Sherbrooke sleeps in an

honored grave beneath the shelter of the dead girl's stainless name. But

the deception has power to harm no longer, so let us leave her in peace.

It is well for our family that, even as a sunken wreck, we still find this

pirate bark Under False Colors,"

LUCY HAMILTON HOOPER.

The Hungry Heart.

A village on the coast of Maine; in this village a boarding-house; in this

boarding-house a parlor.

This parlor is, strictly speaking, a chamber: it is in the second story,

and until lately it contained a bed, washstand, etc.; but a visitor from

New York has taken a fancy to change it to a reception-room. In the rear,

communicating with it, is a sleeping-closet.

The room is what you might expect to find in a village boarding-house: the

floor of liliuptian extent; the ceiling low, uneven, cracked and yellow;

the originally coarse and ugly wall-paper now blotched with age; the

carpet thin, threadbare, patched and stained; the furniture of various

woods and colors, and in various stages of decrepitude.

But a tiny bracket or two, three or four handsome engravings, two fresh

wreaths of evergreens, two vases of garden flowers, a number of Swiss and

French knickknacks, and a few prettily-bound books, give the little nest

an air of refinement which is almost elegance.

You judge at once that the occupant must be a woman--a woman moreover of

sensibility and taste; a woman of good society. Of all this you become

positive when you look at her, take note of her gracious manner and listen

to her cultured voice.

Her expression is singularly frank and almost childlike: it exhibits a

rapid play of thoughts, and even of emotions: it is both vivacious and

refined, both eager and sweet. It would seem as if here were the

impossible combination, the ideal union, so often dreamed of by poets and

artists, of girlish simplicity and innocence with womanly cleverness and

feeling.

In a large easy-chair reclines her rather small, slender and willowy form,

starting slightly forward when she speaks, and sinking back when she

listens. Her sparkling eyes are fixed on the eyes of her one visitor with

an intentness and animation of interest which should be very fascinating.

He, a young man, not five years older than herself, very gentle in manner

and with a remarkably sweet expression of face, evidently is fascinated,

and even strongly moved, if one may judge by the feverish color in his

cheeks, the eager inquiry of his gaze and the tremor of his lips.

The first words of hers which we shall record are a strange utterance to

come from a woman:

"Let me tell you something which I have read lately. It sounds like a

satire, and yet there is too much truth in it: 'Every woman in these days

needs two husbands--one to fill her purse, and one to fill her heart; one

to dress her, and one to love her. It is not easy to be the two in one.'

That is what I have read, and it is only too true. Remember it, and don't

marry."

A spasm of intense spiritual pain crossed the young man's fine and kindly

face.

"Don't say such things, I beg of you!" he implored. "I am sure that in

what you have quoted there is a slander upon most women. I know that it

slanders you."

Her lips parted as if for a contradiction, but it was evidently very

pleasant to her to hear such words from him, and with a little childlike

smile of gratification she let him proceed.

"I have perfect confidence in you," he murmured. "I am willing to put all

my chances of happiness in your hands. My only fear is that I am not half

worthy of you--not a thousandth part worthy of you. Will you not listen to

me seriously? Will you not be so kind?"

A tremor of emotion slightly lifted her hands, and it seemed for a moment

as if she would extend them to him. Then there was a sudden revulsion:

with a more violent shudder, evidently of a painful nature, she threw

herself backward, her face turned pale, and she closed her eyes as if to

shut him from her sight.

"I ought to ask your pardon," she whispered. "I never thought that it

would come to this. I never meant that it should. Oh, I ask your pardon."

Recovering herself with singular quickness, a bright smile dancing along

the constantly changing curves of her lips, like sunbeams leaping from

wavelet to wavelet, she once more leaned cordially toward him, and said in

a gay yet pleading tone, "Let us talk of something else. Come, tell me

about yourself--all about yourself, nothing about me."

"I cannot speak of anything else," he replied, after looking at her long

in silence. "My whole being is full of you: I cannot think of anything

else."

A smile of gratitude sweetly mastered her mouth: then it suddenly turned

to a smile of pity; then it died in a quiver of remorse.

"Oh, we cannot marry," she sighed. "We must not marry, if we could. Let me

tell you something dreadful. People hate each other after they are

married. I know: I have seen it. I knew a girl of seventeen who married a

man ten years older--a man who was Reason itself. Her friends told her,

and she herself believed it, that she was sure of happiness. But after

three years she found that she did not love, that she was not loved, and

that she was miserable. He was too rational: he used to judge her as he

would a column of figures--he had no comprehension for her feelings."

There was a momentary pause, during which she folded her hands and looked

at him, but with an air of not seeing him. In the recollection of this

heart-tragedy of the past and of another she had apparently forgotten the

one which was now pressing upon herself.

"It was incredible how cold and unsympathizing and dull he could be," she

went on. "Once, after she had worked a week in secret to surprise him with

a dressing-gown made by her own hands--labored a week, waited and hoped a

week for one word of praise--he only said, 'It is too short.' Don't you

think it was cruel? It was. I suppose he soon forgot it, but she never

could. A woman cannot forget such slights: they do not seem little blows

to her; they make her very soul bleed."

"Don't reproach _me_ for it," whispered the young man with a pleading

smile. "You seem to be reproving me, and I can't bear it. I am not

guilty."

"Oh, not you," she answered quickly. "I am not scolding you. I could not."

She did not mean it, but she gave him a smile of indescribable sweetness:

she had had no intention of putting out her hands toward him, but she did

it. He seized the delicate fingers and slowly drew her against his heart.

Her face crimson with feeling, her whole form trembling to the tiniest

vein, she rose to her feet, turning away her head as if to fly, and yet

did not escape, and could not wish to escape. Holding her in his arm, he

poured into her ear a murmur which was not words, it was so much more than

words.

"Oh, _could_ you truly love me?" she at last sobbed. "Could you _keep_

loving me?"

After a while some painful recollection seemed to awaken her from this

dream of happiness, and, drawing herself out of his embrace, she looked

him sadly in the eyes, saying, "I must not be so weak. I must save myself

and you from misery. Oh, I must. Go now--leave me for a while: do go. I

must have time to think before I say another word to you."

"Good-bye, my love--soon to be my wife," he answered, stifling with a kiss

the "No, no," which she tried to utter.

Although he meant to go, and although she was wretchedly anxious that he

should go, he was far from gone. All across the room, at every square of

the threadbare carpet, they halted to renew their talk. Minutes passed, an

hour had flown, and still he was there. And when he at last softly opened

the door, she herself closed it, saying, "Oh no! not yet."

So greedy is a loving woman for love, so much does she hate to lose the

breath of it from her soul: to let it be withdrawn is like consenting to

die when life is sweetest.

Thus it was through her, who had bidden him to go, and who had meant that

he should go, that he remained for minutes longer, dropping into her ear

whispers of love which at last drew out her confession of love. And when

the parting moment came--that moment of woman's life in which she least

belongs to herself--there was not in this woman a single reservation of

feeling or purpose.

These people, who were so madly in love with each other, were almost

strangers. The man was Charles Leighton, a native of Northport, who had

never gone farther from his home than to Boston, and there only to

graduate in the Harvard College and Medical School.

The lady was Alice Duvernois: her name was all that was known of her in

the village--it was all that she had told of herself. Only a month

previous to the scene above described she had arrived in Northport to

obtain, as she said, a summer of quiet and sea-bathing. She had come

alone, engaged her own rooms, and for a time seemed to want nothing but

solitude.

Even after she had made herself somewhat familiar with the other inmates

of the boarding-house, nothing positive was learned of her history. That

she had been married was probable: an indefinable something in her face

and carriage seemed to reveal thus much: moreover, her trunks were marked

"James Duvernois."

And yet, so young did she sometimes look, so childlike was her smile and

so simple her manner, that there were curious ones who scouted the

supposition of wifehood. People addressed her both as "Miss" and "Mrs.";

at last it was discovered that her letters bore the latter title: then she

became popularly known as "the beautiful widow."

It would be a waste of time to sketch the opening and ripening of the

intimacy between Doctor Leighton and this fascinating stranger. On his

part it was as nearly a case of love at first sight as perhaps can occur

among people of the Anglo-Saxon race. From the beginning he had no doubts

about giving her his whole heart: he was mastered at once by an emotion

which would not let him hesitate: he longed with all his soul for her

soul, and he strove to win it.

Well, we will not go over the story: we know that he had triumphed. Yes,

in spite of her terror of the future, in spite of some withholding mystery

in the past, she had granted him--or rather she had not been able to

prevent him from seizing--her passionate affection. She had uttered a

promise which, a month before, she would not have dreamed herself capable

of making.

In so doing she had acquired an almost unendurable happiness. It was one

of those mighty and terrible joys which are like the effect of opium--one

of those joys which condense life and abbreviate it, which excite and yet

stupefy, which intoxicate and kill. With this in her heart she lived ten

of her old days in one, but also she drew for those ten days upon her

future.

After one of her interviews with Leighton, after an hour of throbbing, of

trembling, of vivid but confused emotions, her face would be as pale as

death, and her weakness such that she could hardly speak. The hands which,

while they clung to his, had been soft and moist, became dry and hot as

with fever, and then cold as ice. At night she could scarcely sleep: for

hours her brain throbbed with the thought of him, and of what stood

between him and her. In the morning she was heavy with headache, dizzy,

faint, hysterical; yet the moment she saw him again she was all life, all

freshness.

From the point of confession there was no more resistance. She would be

his wife; she would be married whenever he wished; she seemed mad to

reward him for his love; she wanted somehow to sacrifice herself for his

sake. Yet, although she hesitated no longer, she sometimes gazed at him

with eyes full of anxiety, and uttered words which presaged evil.

"If any trouble springs from this, you must pardon me," she more than once

whispered. "I cannot help it. I have never, never, never been loved

before; and oh, I have been so hungry, so famished for it, I had begun to

despair of it. Yes, when I first met you, I had quite despaired of there

being any love in the world for me. I could not help listening to you: I

could not help taking all your words and looks into my craving heart; and

now I am yours--forgive me!"

Stranger as she was in Northport, everybody trusted the frank sweetness in

her face, and sought no other cause for admiring her and wishing her

happiness. The whole village came to the church to witness her marriage

and to doat upon a bridal beauty which lay far more in expression than in

form or feature. A few words of description--inadequate notes to represent

the precious gold of reality--must be given to one who could change the

stare of curiosity to a beaming glance of sympathy.

Small, slender, fragile; neither blonde nor brunette; a clear skin, with a

hectic flush; light chestnut hair, glossy and curling; eyes of violet

blue, large, humid and lustrous, which at the first glance seemed black

because of the darkness, length and closeness of the lashes, and capable

of expressing an earnestness and sweetness which no writer or artist might

hope to depict; a manner which in solitude might be languid, but which the

slightest touch of interest kindled into animation; in fine, white teeth

that sparkled with gayety, and glances that flashed happiness.

She was married without bridal costume, and there was no wedding journey.

Leighton was poor, and must attend to his business; and his wife wanted

nothing from him which he could not spare--nothing but his love.

Impossible to paint her pathetic gratitude for this affection; the

spiritual--it was not passionate--fondness which she bore him; the

softness of her eyes as she gazed for minutes together into his; the

sudden, tremulous outreachings of her hands toward him, as she just

touches him with her finger and draws back, then leans forward and lies in

his arms, uttering a little cry of happiness. Here was a heart that must

long have hungered for affection--a heart unspeakably thankful and joyous

at obtaining it.

"I have been smiling all day," she sometimes said to him. "People have

asked me why I looked so gay, and what I had heard that was funny. It is

just because I am entirely happy, and because the feeling is still a

surprise. Shall I ever get over it? Am I silly? No!"

Her gladness of heart seemed to make her angelic. She rejoiced in every

joy around her, and grieved for every sorrow. She visited the poor of her

husband's patients, watched with them when there was need, made little

collections for their relief, chatted away their forebodings, half cured

them with her smile. There was something catching, comforting, uplifting

in the spectacle of that overbrimming content.

The well were as susceptible to its influence as the sick. Once, half a

dozen men and twice as many boys were seen engaged in recovering her veil

out of a pond into which the wind had blown it; and when it was handed to

her by a shy youth on the end of a twenty-foot pole, all felt repaid for

their labors by the childlike burst of laughter with which she received

it. Now and then, however, shadows fell across this sunshine. In those

dark moments she frequently reverted to the unhappy couple of whom she had

told Leighton when he first spoke to her of marriage. She was possessed to

describe the man--his dull, filmy, unsympathetic black eyes, his

methodical life and hard rationality, his want of sentiment and

tenderness.

"Why do you talk of that person so much?" Leighton implored. "You seem to

be charging me with his cruelty. I am not like him."

The tears filled her eyes as she started toward him, saying, "No, you are

_not_ like him. Even if you should become like him, I couldn't reproach

you. I should merely die."

"But you know him so well?" he added, inquiringly. "You seem to fear him.

Has he any power over you?"

For a moment she was so sombre that he half feared lest her mind was

unstrung on this one subject.

"No," she at last said. "His power is gone--nearly gone. Oh, if I could

only forget!"

After another pause, during which she seemed to be nerving herself to a

confession, she threw herself into her husband's arms and whispered, "He

is my--uncle."

He was puzzled by the contrast between the violence of her emotion and the

unimportance of this avowal; but as he at least saw that the subject was

painful to her, and as he was all confidence and gentleness, he put no

more inquiries.

"Forget it all," he murmured, caressing her; and with a deep sigh, the

sigh of tired childhood, she answered, "Yes."

The long summer days, laden with happiness for these two, sailed onward to

their sunset havens. After a time, as August drew near its perfumed death,

Alice began to speak of a journey which she should soon be obliged to make

to New York. She _must_ go, she said to Leighton--it was a matter of

property, of business: she would tell him all about it some day. But she

would return soon; that is, she would return as soon as possible: she

would let him know how soon by letter.

When he proposed to accompany her she would not hear of it. To merely go

on with her, she represented, would be a useless expense, and to stay as

long as she might need to stay would injure his practice. In these days

her gayety seemed forced, and more than once he found her weeping; yet so

innocent was he, so simple in his views of life, so candid in soul, that

he suspected no hidden evil: he attributed her agitation entirely to grief

at the prospect of separation.

His own annoyance in view of the journey centred in the fact that his wife

would be absent from him, and that he could not incessantly surround her

with his care. Whether she would be happy, whether she would be treated

with consideration, whether she would be safe from accidents and alarms,

whether her delicate health would not suffer, were the questions which

troubled him. He had the masculine instinct of protection: he was as

virile as he was gentle and affectionate.

The parting was more painful to him than he had expected, because to her

it was such an undisguised and terrible agony.

"You will not forget me?" she pleaded. "You will never, never hate me? You

will always love me? You are the only person who has ever made the world

pleasant to me; and you have made it so pleasant! so different from what

it was! a new earth to me! a star! I will come back as soon as this

business will let me. Some day I will come back, never to go away. Oh,

will not that be delightful?"

Her extreme distress, her terror lest she might not return, her

forebodings lest he should some day cease to love her, impressed him for a

moment--only for a truant moment--with doubts as to a mystery. As he left

the railway station, full of gratitude for the last glance of her loving

eyes, he asked himself once or twice, "What is it?"

What was it?

We will follow her. She is ominously sad during the lonely journey: she is

almost stern by the time she arrives in New York. In place of the summer's

sweetness and gayety, there is a wintry and almost icy expression in her

face, as if she were about to encounter trials to which she had been long

accustomed, and which she had learned to bear with hardness if not with

resentment.

No one meets her at the railway station, no one at the door of the sombre

house where her carriage stops--no one until she has passed up stairs into

a darkling parlor.

There she is received by the man whom she has so often described to

Deighton--a man of thin, erect form, a high and narrow forehead, regular

and imperturbable features, fixed and filmy black eyes, a mechanical

carriage, an icy demeanor.

At sight of her he slightly bowed--then he advanced slowly to her and took

her hand: he seemed to be hesitating whether he should give her any

further welcome.

"You need not kiss me," she said, her eyes fixed on the floor. "You do not

wish to do it."

He sighed, as if he too were unhappy, or at least weary; but he drew his

hand away and resumed his walk up and down the room.

"So you chose to pass your summer in a village?" he presently said, in the

tone of a man who has ceased to rule, but not ceased to criticise. "I hope

you liked it."

"I told you in my letters that I liked it," she replied in an

expressionless monotone.

"And I told you in my letters that I did not like it. It would have been

more decent in you to stay in Portland, among the people whom I had

requested to take care of you. However, you are accustomed to have your

own way. I can only observe that when a woman will have her own way, she

ought to pay her own way."

A flush, perhaps of shame, perhaps of irritation, crossed her hitherto

pale face, but she made no response to the scoff, and continued to look at

the floor.

After a few seconds, during which neither of them broke the silence, she

seemed to understand that the reproof was over, and she quietly quitted

the room.

The man pushed the door to violently with his foot, and said in an accent

of angry scorn, "That is what is now called a wife."

Well, we have reached the mystery: we have found that it was a crime.

In the working of social laws there occur countless cases of individual

hardship. The institution of marriage is as beneficent as the element of

fire; yet, like that, it sometimes tortures when it should only have

comforted.

The sufferer, if a woman, usually bears her smart tamely--with more or

less domestic fretting and private weeping indeed, but without violent

effort to escape from her bed of embers. Divorce is public, ugly and

brutal: her sensibility revolts from it. Moreover, mere unhappiness, mere

disappointment of the affections, does not establish a claim for legal

separation. Finally, there is woman's difficulty of self-maintenance--the

fact that her labor will not in general give her both comfort and

position.

What then? Unloved, unable to love, yet with an intense desire for

affection, and an immense capacity for granting it, her heart is tempted

to wander beyond the circle of her duty. A flattering shape approaches her

dungeon-walls; a voice calls to her to come forth and be glad, if only for

a moment; there seems to be a chance of winning the adoration which has

been her whole life's desire; there is an opportunity of using the

emotions which are burning within her. Shall she burst open the gate on

which is written LEGALITY?

Evidently the temptation is mighty. Laden with a forsaken, wounded and

perhaps angry heart, she is so easily led into the belief that her

exceptional suffering gives her a right to exceptional action! She feels

herself justified in setting aside law, when law, falsifying its purpose,

violating its solemn pledge, brings her misery instead of happiness. She

will not, or cannot, reflect that special hardships must occur under all

law; that it is the duty of the individual to bear such chance griefs

without insurrection against the public conscience; that entire freedom of

private judgment would dissolve society.

Too often--though far less often than man does the like--she makes of her

sorrow an armor of excuse, and enters into a contest for unwarrantable

chances of felicity. Only, in general, she is so far conscious of guilt,

or at least so far fearful of punishment, as to carry on her struggle in

the darkness. Few, however maddened by suffering, openly defy the serried

phalanx of the world. Still fewer venture the additional risk of defying

it under the forms of a legality which they have ventured to violate.

Why is it that so few women, even of a low and reckless class, have been

bigamists? It is because the feminine soul has a profound respect, a

little less than religious veneration, for the institution of marriage;

because it instinctively recoils from trampling upon the form which

consecrates love; because in very truth it regards the nuptial bond as a

sacrament. I believe that the average woman would turn away from bigamy

with a deeper shudder than from any other stain of conjugal infidelity.

But there are exceptions to all modes of feeling and of reasoning.

Here is Alice Duvernois: she is a woman of good position, of intellectual

quickness, of unusual sensitiveness of spirit; yet she has thought out

this woeful question differently from the great majority of her sex. To

her, thirsty for sympathy and love, bound to a man who gives her neither,

grown feverish and delirious with the torment of an empty heart, it has

seemed that the sanctity of a second marriage will somehow cover the

violation of a first.

This aberration we can only explain on the ground that she was one of

those natures--mature in some respects, but strangely childlike in

others--whom most of us love to stigmatize as unpractical, and who in fact

never become quite accustomed to this world and its rules.

On the very evening of her arrival home she put to her husband a question

of infantile and almost incredible simplicity. It was one of the many

observations which made him tell her from time to time that she was a

fool.

"What do they do," she asked, "to women who marry two husbands?"

"They put them in jail," was his cool reply.

"I think it is brutal," she broke out indignantly, as if the iron gates

were already closing upon her, and she were contesting the justice of the

punishment.

"You are a pretty simpleton, to set up your opinion against that of all

civilized society!" was the response of incarnate Reason.

From that moment she trembled at her danger, and quivered under the

remorse which terror brings. At times she thought of flying, of abandoning

the husband who did not love her for the one who did; but she was afraid

of being pursued, afraid of discovery. The knowledge that society had

already passed judgment upon her made her see herself in the new light of

a criminal, friendless, hunted and doomed. The penalty of her illegal

grasp after happiness was already tracking her like a bloodhound.

Yet when she further learned that her second marriage was not binding

because of the first, her heart rose in mutiny. Faithful to the only love

that there had been for her in the world, she repeated to herself, a

hundred times a day, "It _is_ binding--it _is_!"

She was in dark insurrection against her kind; at times she was on the

point of bursting out into open defiance. She stared at Duvernois, crazy

to tell him, "I am wedded to another."

He noticed the wild expression, the longing, wide-open eyes, the parted

and eager lips, the trembling chin. At last he said, with a brutality

which had become customary with him, "What are you putting on those airs

for? I suppose you are imagining yourself the heroine of a romance."

With a glare of pain and scorn she walked away from him in silence.

It is shocking indeed to be fastened speechless upon a rack, and to be

charged by uncomprehending souls with counterfeiting emotion. She was so

constituted that she could not help laying up this speech of her husband's

against him as one of many stolid misdoings which justified both contempt

and aversion. In fact, his inability or unwillingness to comprehend her

had always been, in her searching and sensitive eyes, his chief crime. To

be understood, to be accepted at her full worth, was one of the most

urgent demands of her nature.

The life of this young woman, not only within but without, was strange

indeed. She fulfilled that problem of Hawthorne's--an individual bearing

one character, living one life in one place, and a totally different one

in another place--upon one spot of earth angelic, and upon another vile.

Stranger still, her harsher qualities appeared where her manner of life

was lawful, and her finer ones where it was condemnable. At Northport she

had been like sunlight to her intimates and like a ministering seraph to

the poor. In New York she avoided society: she had no tenderness for

misery.

The explanation seems to be that love was her only motive of feeling and

action. Not a creature of reason, not a creature of conscience--she was

only a creature of emotion, an exaggerated woman.

Unfortunately, her husband, methodical in life, judicial in mind,

contemptuous of sentiment, was an exaggerated man. Here was a beating

heart united to a skeleton. The result of this unfortunate combination had

been a wreck of happiness and defiance of law.

Duvernois had not a friend intelligent enough to say to him, "You _must _

love your wife; if you cannot love her, you must with merciful deception

make her believe that you do. You must show her when you return from

business that you have thought of her; you must buy a bouquet, a toy, a

trifle, to carry home to her. If you do these things, you will be

rewarded; if not, you will be punished."

But had there been such a friend, Duvernois would not have comprehended

him. Ho would have replied, or at least he would have thought, "My wife is

a fool. She is not worth the money that I now spend upon her, much less

the reflection and time that you call upon me to spend."

Two such as Alice and Duvernois could not live together in peace.

Notwithstanding her old dread of him, and notwithstanding the new alarm

with which she was filled by the discovery that she was a felon, she could

not dissemble her feelings when she looked him in the face. Sometimes she

was silently contemptuous--sometimes (when her nerves were shaken) openly

hostile. Rational, impassive, vigorous as he was, she made him unhappy.

The letters of Leighton were at once a joy and a sorrow. She awaited them

impatiently; she went every day to the delivery post-office whither she

had directed them to be sent; she took them from the hands of the

indifferent clerk with a suffocating beating of the heart. Alone, she

devoured them, kissed them passionately a hundred times, sat down in

loving haste to answer them. But then came the necessity of excusing her

long absence, of inventing some lie for the man she worshiped, of

deterring him from coming to see her.

During that woeful winter of terror, of aversion, of vain longing, her

health failed rapidly. A relentless cough pursued her, the beautiful flame

in her cheek burned freely, and a burst of blood from the lungs warned her

that her future was not to be counted by years.

She cared little: her sole desire was to last until summer. She merely

asked to end her hopeless life in loving arms--to end it before those arms

should recoil from her in horror.

No discovery. Her husband was too indifferent toward her to watch her

closely, or even to suspect her. As early in June as might be she obtained

permission to go to the seaside, and with an eagerness which would have

found the hurricane slow she flew to Northport.

Leighton received her with a joy which at first blinded him to her

enfeebled health.

"Oh, how could you stay so long away from me?" were his first words. "Oh,

my love, my darling wife! thank you for coming back to me."

But after a few moments, when the first flush and, sparkle of excitement

had died out of her cheeks and eyes, he asked eagerly, "What is the matter

with you? Have you been sick?"

"I am all well again, now that I see you," she answered, putting out her

arms to him with that little start of love and joy which had so often

charmed him.

It absolutely seemed that in the presence of the object of her affection

this erring woman became innocent. Her smile was as simple and pure as

that of childhood: her violet eyes reminded one of a heaven without a

cloud. It must have been that, away from punishment and from terror, she

did not feel herself to be guilty.

But the day of reckoning was approaching. She had scarcely begun to regain

an appearance of health under the stimulus of country air and renewed

happiness, when a disquieting letter arrived from Duvernois. In a tone

which was more than usually authoritative, he directed her to meet him at

Portland, to go to Nahant and Newport. Did he suspect something?

She would have given years of life to be able to show the letter to

Leighton and ask his counsel. But here her punishment began to double upon

her: the being whom she most loved was precisely the one to whom she must

not expose this trouble--the one from whom she was most anxious to conceal

it.

In secret, and with unconfided tears, she wrote a reply, alleging (what

was true) that her feeble health demanded quiet, and praying that she

might be spared the proposed journey. For three days she feverishly

expected an answer, knowing the while that she ought to go to Portland to

meet Duvernois, should he chance to come, yet unable to tear herself away

from Leighton, even for twenty-four hours.

In the afternoon of the third day she made one of her frequent visits of

charity. At the house of a poor and bed-ridden widow she met, as she had

hoped to meet, her husband. When they left the place he took her into his

gig and carried her home.

It was a delicious day of mid June: the sun was setting in clouds of

crimson and gold; the earth was in its freshest summer glory. In the

beauty of the scene, and in the companionship of the heart which was all

hers, she forgot, or seemed to forget, her troubles. One hand rested on

Leighton's arm; her face was lifted steadily to his, like a flower to the

light; her violet eyes were dewy and sparkling with happiness. There were

little clutches of her fingers on his wrist whenever he turned to look at

her. There were spasms of joy in her slender and somewhat wasted frame as

she leaned from time to time against his shoulder.

Arrived at the house, she was loth to have him leave her for even the time

required to take his horse to the stable.

"Come soon," she said--"come as quick as you can. I shall be at the

window. Look up when you reach the gate. Look at the window all the way

from the gate to the door."

In an instant, not even taking off her bonnet, she was sitting by the

window waiting for him to appear.

A man approached, walking behind the hedge of lilacs which bordered the

yard, and halted at the gate with an air of hesitation. She turned ghastly

white: retribution was upon her. It was Duvernois.

With that swift instinct of escape which sensitive and timorous creatures

possess, she glided out of the room, through the upper hall, down a back

stairway, into the garden behind the house, and so on to an orchard

already obscure in the twilight. Here she paused in her breathless flight,

and burst into one of her frequent coughs, which she vainly attempted to

smother.

"I was already dying," she groaned. "Ah, why could he not have given me

time to finish?"

From the orchard she could faintly see the road, and she now discovered

Leighton returning briskly toward the house. Her first thought was, "He

will look up at the window, and he will not see me!" Her next was, "They

will meet, and all will be known!"

Under the sting of this last reflection she again ran onward until her

breath failed. She had no idea where she should go: her only purpose was

to fly from immediate exposure and scorn--to fly both from the man she

detested and the man she loved. Her speed was quickened to the extent of

her strength by the consideration that she was already missed, and would

soon be pursued.

"Oh, don't let them come!--don't let them find me!" she prayed to some

invisible power, she could not have said what.

Mainly intent as she was upon mere present escape from reproachful eyes,

she at times thought of lurking in the woods or in some neighboring

village until Duvernois should disappear and leave her free to return to

Leighton. But always the reflection came up, "Now he knows that I have

deceived him; now he will despise me and hate me, and refuse to see me;

now I can never go back."

In such stresses of extreme panic and anguish an adult is simply a child,

with the same overweight of emotions and the same imperfections of reason.

During the moments when she was certain that Leighton would not forgive

her, Alice made wild clutches at the hope that Duvernois might. There were

glimpses of the earlier days of her married life; cheering phantoms of the

days when she believed that she loved and that she was beloved--phantoms

which swore by altars and bridal veils to secure her pardon.

She imagined Duvernois overtaking her with the words, "Alice, I forgive

your madness: do you also forgive the coldness which drove you to it?"

She imagined herself springing to him, reaching out her hands for

reconciliation, putting up her mouth for a kiss, and sobbing, "Ah, why

were you not always so?"

Then of a sudden she scorned this fancy, trampled it under her weary,

aching feet, and abhorred herself for being faithless to Leighton.

At last she reached a sandy, lonely coast-road, a mile from the village,

with a leaden, pulseless, corpselike sea on the left, and on the right a

long stretch of black, funereal marshes. Seating herself on a ruinous

little bridge of unpainted and wormeaten timbers, she looked down into a

narrow, sluggish rivulet, of the color of ink, which oozed noiselessly

from the morass into the ocean. Her strength was gone: for the present

farther flight was impossible, unless she fled from earth--fled into the

unknown.

This thought had indeed followed her from the house: at first it had been

vague, almost unnoticed, like the whisper of some one far behind; then it

had become clearer, as if the persuading fiend went faster than she

through the darkness, and were overtaking her. Now it was urgent, and

would not be hushed, and demanded consideration.

"If you should die," it muttered, "then you will escape: moreover, those

who now abhor you and scorn you, will pity you; and pity for the dead is

almost respect, almost love."

"Oh, how can a ruined woman defend herself but by dying?" She wept as she

gazed with a shudder into the black rivulet.

Then she thought that the water seemed foul; that her body would become

tangled in slimy reeds and floating things; that when they found her she

would be horrible to look upon. But even in this there was penance, a

meriting of forgiveness, a claim for pity.

Slowly, inch by inch, like one who proposes a step which cannot be

retraced, she crept under the railing of the bridge, seated herself on the

edge of the shaky planking and continued to gaze into the inky waters.

A quarter of an hour later, when the clergyman of Northport passed by that

spot, returning from a visit to a dying saint of his flock, no one was

there.

We must revert to the two husbands. Duvernois had long wondered what could

keep his wife in a sequestered hamlet, and immediately on her refusal to

join him in a summer tour he had resolved to look into her manner of life.

At the village hotel he had learned that a lady named Duvernois had

arrived in the place during the previous summer, and that she had been

publicly married to a Doctor Leighton. He did not divulge his name--he did

not so much as divulge his emotions: he listened to this story calmly, his

eyes fixed on vacancy.

At the door of the boarding-house he asked for Mrs. Duvernois, and then

corrected himself, saying, "I mean Mrs. Leighton."

He must have had singular emotions at the moment, yet the servant-girl

noticed nothing singular in his demeanor.

Mrs. Leighton could not be found. None of the family had seen her enter or

go out: it was not known that she had been in the house for an hour.

"But there comes Doctor Leighton," remarked the girl as the visitor turned

to leave.

Even in this frightful conjuncture the characteristic coolness of

Duvernois did not forsake him: after a moment's hesitation and a quick

glance at his rival, he said, "I do not know him: I will call again."

On the graveled walk which led from the yard gate to the doorstep the two

men met and passed without a word--the face of the one as inexpressive of

the strangeness and horror of the encounter as the mind of the other was

unconscious of them.

Leighton immediately missed Alice. In a quarter of an hour he became

anxious: in an hour he was in furious search of her.

Somewhat later, when Duvernois came once more to the house, accompanied by

a fashionably-dressed youth, who, as it subsequently appeared, was his

younger brother, he found the family and the neighborhood in wild alarm

over the disappearance of Mrs. Leighton. The two at once returned to the

hotel, procured saddle-horses and joined in the general chase.

It was ten o'clock at night, and the moon was shining with a vaporous,

spectral light, when the maddest of chances brought the two husbands

together over a body which the tide, with its multitudinous cold fingers,

had gently laid upon the beach.

Leighton leaped from his horse, lifted the corpse with a loud cry, and

covered the white wet face with kisses.

Duvernois leaned forward in his saddle, and gazed at both without a word

or a movement.

"Oh, what could have led her to this?" groaned the physician, already too

sure that life had departed.

"Insanity," was the monotoned response of the statue on horseback.

The funeral took place two days later: the coffin-plate bore the

inscription, "Alice Leighton, aged 23." Duvernois read it, and said not a

word.

"If you don't claim her as your wife," whispered the brother, "you may

find it difficult to marry again."

"Do you think I shall want to marry again?" responded the widower with an

icy stare.

He was aware that he had lost a shame and a torment, and not aware that

she might have been an honor and a joy, if only he had been able to love.

J. W. DE FOREST.

"How Mother Did It."

The year 1839--that is, the year in which I was born--is of no manner of

importance to myself or anybody else. The year 1859--that is, the year in

which I began to _live_ (Charlie and I got married that year)--is of

considerable importance to myself and to somebody else. The two decades

forming the interim between those years constitute my Dark Age, in which I

teethed and measled and whooping-coughed, and went to school, and wore my

hair in two long pig-tails, and loved molasses candy, and regarded a

school-room as purgatory, a ball-room as heaven--when I sang and danced

and grew as the birds and grasshoppers and flowers sing and dance and

grow, because they having nothing else to do.

Then came my Golden Age. That means, then came Charlie into my life, when

I felt for the first time that there was music in the birds' voices and

perfume in the flowers--that there was light in the heavens above and on

the earth beneath, for God was in heaven and Charlie was on earth--when I,

who had all along been hardly more than a human grasshopper, became the

happiest of happy women--so much happier, I thought, than I deserved. For

who was I, and what great thing had I ever done, that I should be crowned

with such a crown of glory as--Charlie? why should I, insignificant I, be

so blest among women as to be taken to wife by Charlie?

I was insanely sentimental enough to rather resent the fact that Charlie

was prosaically well off: his circumstances were distressingly easy. It

would have been so much nicer, so deliciously romantic, if there had been

an opportunity afforded me to show how ready, nay, eager, I was to

sacrifice friends, home and country for his dear sake. But Charlie didn't

want me to sacrifice my friends; nor did it require any great amount of

heroism to exchange my modestly comfortable home for his decidedly

luxurious one; and as for country, nothing on earth could have induced

Charlie to leave his own country, much less his own parish, much less his

own plantation. So we were married without any talk of sacrifice on either

side, and moved quietly enough from father's small plantation to Charlie's

large one.

There was but one drawback to the perfectness of my happiness: there was

so little hope of my ever having an opportunity to air those magnanimous

traits of character upon the possession of which I so plumed myself. I

felt sure that I could meet the most adverse circumstances with the most

smiling patience, but circumstances obstinately refused to be adverse. I

was inwardly conscious that the most trying emergency could not shake my

heroic but purely feminine fortitude; but, alas! my fortitude was likely

to rust while waiting for the emergency. Injury and wrong should be met

with sublime dignity, but the most wildly speculative imagination could

not look upon Charlie's placidly handsome face and convert him into a

possible tyrant.

To tell how the longed-for opportunity to exercise my powers of endurance,

and my dignity, and all the rest of it, did finally come about, and to

tell how I bore the test, is the object of this paper.

For the first six months of our married life, Charlie and I were simply

ridiculously happy--selfishly happy too. We resented a neighbor's visit as

an act of barbarous invasion, and the necessity of returning such visits

was acknowledged with a sublimity of resignation worthy of pictorial

representation in that exquisite parlor manual, Fox's _Book of Martyrs_.

If Charlie left the house for an hour or two, I looked upon his enforced

absence as a cruel dispensation of Providence, which I did _not_ bear with

"fortitude and sublime dignity," but pouted over like the ridiculous baby

I was. Bare conjugal civility required that on leaving the house Charlie

should kiss me three times, and on returning six times: anything short of

that I should have considered a pre-monitory symptom of approaching

separation. If Charlie had ever been so savage as to call me plain

"Lulie," I should have felt certain he was sick and tired of me, and was

repenting of having married me instead of that spectacled bas-bleu, Miss

Minerva Henshaw, who read Buckle and talked dictionary. I believe I was

intoxicated with my own happiness, and was a little nonsensical because I

was so happy.

Fortunately for the comfort of both Charlie and myself, his domestic

cabinet consisted of a marvelously well-trained set of servants, who were

simply perfect--as perfect in their way as Charlie was in his. They had

been trained by Charlie's mother, who had been the head of affairs in his

house up to the hour of her death--an event which had occurred some dozen

years before my first meeting with Charlie. Everybody said she had been a

celebrated housekeeper, and Charlie's devotion to her had been the talk of

the country-side. There were people malicious enough to say that if

Charlie's mother had never died, he would never have married, but I take

the liberty of resenting such an assertion as a personal insult; for,

although I don't doubt the dear old lady was a perfect jewel in her way,

yet, looking at the portrait of her which hangs over our parlor

mantelpiece, I see the face of a hard, determined-looking woman with cold

gray eyes and rigidly set mouth, in a funny-looking black dress, neither

high-necked nor low-necked, having a starchy white ruffle round the edge,

in vivid white contrast to the yellow skin; with grizzly, iron-gray curls

peeping out from under a cap that is fearfully and wonderfully made, with

a huge ruffled border radiating in a circumference of several feet, while

its two black-and-white gauze ribbon strings lie in rigid exactness over

her two rigidly exact shoulders. Looking on this portrait, I do not thank

anybody for saying that it was only because death chose that shining mark

that I had found favor in Charlie's eyes.

We had been married, I suppose, about six months, when, sitting one

evening over a cozy wood-fire in our cozy little parlor, just under the

work of art I have described at such length, Charlie committed his first

matrimonial solecism. He yawned, actually gaped--an open-mouthed, audible,

undeniable yawn!

Glancing up at him from my work (which consisted of the inevitable worked

slippers without which no woman considers her wifehood absolutely

asserted), I caught him in the act. "Are you tired, Charlie?" I asked in

accents of wifely anxiety.

Tired! Poor fellow! he ought to have been, for he had ridden all over the

plantation that day, had written two business letters, and smoked there's

no telling how many cigars, and had only taken one little cat-nap after

dinner.

He was leaning back in his arm-chair, with his eyes fixed in mournful

meditation upon his mother's portrait (at least I thought so), when I

asked him if he was tired, and I fancied he was thinking sad thoughts of

the mother who had not been dead so very long as never to trouble the

thoughts of the living; so, laying down my slippers, I crossed the rug and

perched myself on Charlie's knee.

"Talk to me about her, Charlie dear."

"About whom, little one?" asked Charlie, turning his eyes toward me with a

little lazy look of inquiry.

"About your mother, Charlie: weren't you thinking about her just now?"

"I don't know--maybe I was. Dear mother! you don't find many women like

her now-a-days."

Reader, that was my first glimpse of Charlie's hobby. And from the

luck-less moment when I so innocently invited him to mount it, up to the

time when I forcibly compelled him to dismount from it, I had ample

opportunity to exercise my "smiling patience, sublime dignity and heroic

fortitude." Whether or not I improved my opportunities properly, I will

leave you to judge for yourself. But for two whole years "how mother did

it" seemed to be the watchword of Charlie's existence, and was the _bête

noir_ of mine.

So long as Charlie and I were in Paradise the house kept itself, and very

nicely it did it too, but by the time we were ready to come back to earth

the perfect servants, who had been taking such good care of themselves,

and our two daft selves into the bargain, were found to be sadly

demoralized. The discovery came upon us gradually. I think my husband

noticed the decadence as soon as I did, but I wasn't going to invite his

attention to the fact; and he, I suppose, thought that I thought that

everything was just as it should be.

One of Charlie's inherited manias was for early rising--a habit which

would have been highly commendable and undeniably invaluable in a laboring

man, but which struck me, who had an equally strong mania for not rising

early, as extremely inconvenient and the least little bit absurd. Charlie

got up early simply because "mother did it" before him; and after he had

risen at earliest dawn and dressed himself, he had nothing better to do

than walk out on the front gallery, locate himself in a big wicker chair,

tilt his chair back and elevate his feet to the top of the banisters, and

stare out over the cottonfields. This position he would maintain,

probably, about twenty minutes. Then the pangs of hunger would render him

restless, and he would draw out his watch to note the time of day. The

next step in the formula would bring him back to my room door while I was

still sleepily trying to reconnect the broken links of a dream, from which

vain effort he would startle me into wide-awake reality by a stentorian

"Lulie, Lulie! Come, wife--it's breakfast-time."

Upon which, instead of "heroic fortitude," I would treat him to a little

cross "Please yell at the cook, Charlie, and not at me. I'm sure if people

_will_ get up at such unearthly hours, they should expect to be kept

waiting for their breakfast."

Then the spirit of unrest would impel Charlie toward the back door, where

I would hear him commanding, exhorting, entreating.

Mentally registering a vow to give my husband a dose of Mrs. Winslow's

Soothing Syrup on the coming night, I would relinquish all hope of another

nap, get up and dress myself, and join my roaring lion on the front

gallery, where we would both sit meekly waiting for the allied forces of

kitchen and dining-room to decide upon the question of revictualing us.

"Lulie," said Charlie to me one morning at the breakfast-table, "things

are getting all out of gear about this house, somehow or other."

I put down the coffee-pot with a resigned thump and asked my lord, with an

injured air, to please explain himself.

"Well, when mother was alive I never knew what it was to sit down to my

breakfast later than six o'clock in summer or seven in winter."

"How did she manage it, Charlie?" I asked, very meekly.

"Why, by getting up early herself. No servant on the face of the globe is

going to get up at daybreak and go to work in earnest when she knows her

mistress is sound asleep in bed. I will tell you how mother did: she had a

pretty good-sized bell, that she kept on a table by her bedside, and every

morning, as soon as her eyes were open, she would give such a peal with

that old bell that all the servants on the premises knew that 'Mistress

was awake and up,' and bestirred themselves accordingly. There was no

discount on mother: that was the way she made father a rich man, too."

"But, Charlie, you're already a rich man, and why on earth should we get

out of bed at daybreak just because your mother and father did so before

us?"

"Of course, Lulie," said Charlie, the least little bit coldly, "I have no

desire in the world to force you to conform to my views: I only told you

how mother did it."

Reader, you know how I loved Charlie, and after that I out-larked the lark

in early rising; and although Charlie and I did little more than gape in

each other's faces for an hour or two, and wish breakfast would come, and

wonder what made them take so long, he was perfectly satisfied that we

were both on the road that was to make us healthier, wealthier and wiser.

Among other points on which my husband and I were mutually agreed was a

liking for good strong coffee, and we also held in common one decided

opinion, and that was, that our coffee was gradually becoming anything but

good and strong.

Charlie broached the subject first. "Lulie, our coffee is getting to be

perfectly undrinkable," said he one morning, putting his cup down with a

face of disgust.

"It is indeed, Charlie: it's perfectly villainous. Milly ought to be

ashamed of herself: I shall speak to her again after breakfast."

"Maybe you don't give out enough coffee?" suggested Charlie.

"I don't know how much Milly takes," I replied, innocently.

"Takes! Do you mean to say that you don't know how much coffee goes out of

your pantry, Lulie? I don't wonder we never have any fit to drink!"

If I had been of an argumentative turn, I would have asked Charlie to

explain how giving the cook carte blanche in the matter of quantity should

have had such a disastrous effect in the matter of quality. But I was not

of an argumentative turn, so I took no notice of his queer logic.

"Why should I bother about every spoonful of coffee, Charlie? You assured

me, when I first came here, that every servant you had was as honest as

you or I, and I'm sure Milly knows better than I do how much coffee she

_ought_ to take."

"Well," said Charlie with a sigh of mock resignation, "that may be the way

they do things now-a-days, but I remember exactly how mother managed to

have good coffee." Here the hobby broke into a brisk canter: "I recollect

she had a little oval wooden box, that held, I suppose, about a quart--or

two, maybe--of roasted coffee, and that box stood on the mantelpiece in

her room; and every morning, as soon as her bell rang, Milly would come

with a cup and spoon, and mother would measure out two table-spoonfuls of

coffee with her own hands and give it to the cook, and the cook knew

better than not to have good coffee, I can tell you."

"Are you sure it was only two spoonfuls, Charlie?"

"I am sure," responded Charlie, solemnly.

As good-luck would have it, while rummaging in the store-room a day or two

after that coffee talk, I came upon a little old oval wooden box, the lid

of which I detached with some difficulty, and as the scent of the roses

hung round it still, I had no difficulty in identifying my treasure-trove

with the wooden box that had played such a distinguished part in the good

old times when cooks "knew better than not to have good coffee, I can tell

you."

Hoping that some relic of my dead predecessor might prove more

awe-inspiring to contumacious Milly than my own despised monitions, I

exhumed the wooden box, had it thoroughly cleansed, filled with roasted

coffee and placed upon my mantelpiece, giving Milly orders to come to _me_

hereafter, every morning, for the coffee.

Charlie gave me a grateful little kiss when he saw the old box in the old

place, either as a reward for my amiable endeavor to do things as mother

did, or because he took the old wooden box for an outward and visible sign

of the inward and spiritual grace that was to move Milly to make good

coffee.

But somehow or other, in spite of the unsightly old wooden box on my

mantelshelf, the coffee didn't improve in the least. Maybe the charm

failed to work because Charlie had forgotten which end of the mantelpiece

his mother used to keep it on, or I used the wrong spoon. I'm inclined to

lay it on the spoon myself, but there's no telling.

The first cotton-picking season that came round after my marriage seemed

to afford Charlie no end of opportunities for riding his hobby at a fast

and furious pace. It seemed as if there was no end to the things that

mother used to do at that important season. I suppose she really was a

wonderful woman, and I humbly hope that by the time I have lived as long

as she did, and get to looking as she does in her portrait, and can wear a

wonderful-looking cap with the wonderful composure she wore it with, and

have little iron-gray curls hanging round my iron-gray visage, I may be

only half as wonderful.

"Would I see to the making of the cotton sacks? That was one thing mother

always did." Thus Charlie.

Of course I would: why should I object to doing anything that would

forward my husband's interests? Besides, I was actually pining for some

healthful occupation: I was tired of playing at living. I resolved on a

brilliant plan. I would out-mother mother, for she only _saw_ to the

making of the sacks: I would make them myself, every one of them, on my

sewing-machine. If I couldn't make cotton-sacks on it, what was the use of

having it?

Charlie had informed me that he would send me down seven or eight women

from the quarters to make the sacks. I informed him with a flourish that I

should need but one: I should want her to cut the sacks out. Charlie

thanked me, and Martha and I and "Wheeler & Wilson" made the sacks.

Was I to blame that the wretched things burst in twenty places at once the

first time they were used? Was I to blame that two women were kept busy

mending my sacks until they ceased to be sacks? Charlie might think so,

but I did not.

He reported the failure of my cotton-sack experiment with very unbecoming

levity, as it struck me, accompanying his report with a somewhat unjust

comment upon new-fangled notions, such as sewing-machines, etc., etc.,

winding up with--"Now, when mother was alive" (I fairly winced), "the

house was not considered too good for the darkies to sit on the back

gallery with their work and make the sacks right under mother's

eye--sewing them with good strong thread, too, that was spun for the

purpose. I can remember the old spinning-wheel: it used to sit right at

that end of the gallery."

Like Captain Cuttle, I "made a note of it" for future use.

I often had occasion to wonder, during the early years of my married life,

how it happened that the son of such an exceptionally perfect woman as I

was compelled to presume my respected mother-in-law to have been, should

have grown up with such shockingly disorderly habits as had my Charlie.

The wretched creature would stalk into my bed-room--which I was

particularly dainty about--fresh from shooting or fishing, with pounds of

mud clinging to his boots, bristling all over with cockleburs, his hands

grimed with gunpowder; and helping himself to water from my ewer, he would

begin dabbling in my china basin until he had reduced its originally pure

contents into a compound of mud and ink, and would wind up by making a

finish of my fresh damask towel, and throwing it on the bed or a chair

instead of returning it to the rack, as he should have done.

"Charlie," said I one day, saucily inviting a dose of "what mother did,"

"what did mother used to do when you came into her room and turned it into

a pig-stye, and then left it for her to clean up again?"

"She never let me do it," said Charlie with a laugh. "I'll tell you how

she did. She had a tin basin on a shelf on the back gallery, and one of

those great big rolling towels that lasted about a week; and after her

washstand was fixed up in the morning, we knew better than to upset it, I

can tell you."

"Very well, sir: I intend you shall know better than to upset mine, I'll

show you."

In fact, things had come to that pass that I had mentally resolved to

"show" Charlie a great many things. I firmly believed that the secret of

the power that Charlie's mother had exercised over her household, and

still exercised over him in memory, lay in the fact that she made them all

afraid of her: so I firmly resolved that they should all be afraid of me,

poor little me! It is true, I was but twenty, and she was fifty; I was but

a pocket edition of a woman, and she was a _Webster Unabridged_; I had

little meek blue eyes, that dropped to the ground in the most shamefaced

manner if a body did but look at me, and she had hard, cold gray eyes,

that not only looked straight at you, but right through you. Still, I

hoped, notwithstanding these trifling drawbacks, to make myself very

awe-inspiring by dint of a grand assumption of spirit.

To put it into very plain language, I resolved to bully Charlie off his

hobby. He had thrown his mother at my head (figuratively speaking, of

course) until, if she had been present in _propria persona_, I should have

been tempted to try Hiawatha's remarkable feat with his grandmother, and

throw her up against the moon. But as I could not revenge myself upon her

personally, I began to lay deep and subtle plans for inducing Charlie to

leave her to her repose.

As the veritable bell which, in the days when "mother did it," had acted

as a sort of Gabriel's trump, was still extant, minus clapper and handle,

I was enabled to provide myself with its fac-simile. Armed with this

instrument of retribution, I laid me down to sleep by Charlie's side,

gloating in anticipation over my ripening scheme of vengeance.

It was a rare thing for me to wake up before Charlie, but I did manage to

do so on the morning in question, by dint, I think, of a powerful mental

resolution to that effect made the night before. I raised myself very

softly, so as not to disturb my husband's gentle slumbers, and, possessing

myself of my big bell, I laid on with a will, raising such a clatter in

the quiet morning air that Charlie fairly bounded into the middle of the

room before he in the least comprehended where it came from.

"In the name of God, Lulie, what is the meaning of that?" he exclaimed,

looking at me as if he half doubted my sanity.

"That's the way mother did it, Charlie," I replied placidly enough, and,

replacing my big bell on the table, I settled myself on my pillow once

more, ostensibly to go to sleep again--in reality to have my laugh out in

a quiet fashion, for it was enough to have made the very bed-posts laugh

to see Charlie's funny look of astonishment and indignation. But of course

he couldn't say a word, you know.

For two more mornings I clattered my bell about his precious old head, and

then he paid me to quit, and after that began riding his hobby at a little

slower gait.

The next direct intimation he gave that his faith in inherited ideas was

growing shaky was a plaintive little request that I would not stick so

close to the old wooden box, but give out enough coffee to ensure him

something to drink for his breakfast.

Now, I had no wish that my husband should drink bad coffee just because

Providence had seen fit to remove his mother from this sublunary sphere: I

merely wanted to cure him of telling me how mother did it; so as soon as

he thus tacitly acknowledged that his suggestion had not been a success, I

took matters into my own hands, and proved to him that coffee could be

made as well by young wives as by old mothers.

In the due revolution of the seasons King Cotton donned his royal robes of

ermine once more, and sacks again became the one thing needful. It was the

very rainiest, wettest, muddiest picking-season that had ever been seen.

In pursuance of my plan, I had seven or eight women down from the

quarters, and a spinning-wheel also, which was set to humming right under

our bed-room window.

The rainy weather had kept Charlie in the house, and he was lounging on a

couch in my room, enjoying a pleasant semi-doze, when the monotonous

whirr-r-r of the spinning-wheel first attracted his attention. "Lulie," he

asked, rising into a sitting posture, "what is that infernal noise on the

back gallery?"

"The spinning-wheel, Charlie. They are spinning thread to make the sacks

with," I answered, without looking up from my work.

"Oh!" and Charlie subsided for a while. "Ahem! Lulie, my dear, how long is

that devilish spinning to be kept up?"

"Devilish! Why, Charlie, that's the way mother did it."

"Well," said Charlie, scratching his head and looking foolish, "I know she

did, Lulie, but I'll be confounded if I can stand it much longer."

"Why, Charlie, you used to stand it when mother did it," I answered

maliciously.

"I was hardly ever about the house in those days, Lulie: I suppose that

was why I didn't mind it."

"Why weren't you about the house much in those days, Charlie?"

"Because you weren't in it, you witch, I suppose."

This was such a decided triumph over the old lady of the portrait that I

could afford to be amiable; so, giving him a spasmodic little hug and an

energetic little kiss, I went out and stopped the spinning nuisance

immediately.

After that the hobby went slower and slower, feebler and feebler. One more

energetic display of my bogus spirit and "the enemy was mine."

Winter came on in its duly-appointed time, bringing with it the usual

quantity of wild ducks and more than the usual degree of severe cold.

Charlie was an inveterate duck-shooter, and with the return of the season

came the return of mud and dirt in my bowls.

I determined to do as mother did. A tin basin made its appearance on the

back gallery, four yards of crash sewed together at the end were made to

revolve over the roller, and by way of forcing the experiment to a

successful issue orders were given that my own pitchers should be filled

only after nightfall.

I was sitting in my bed-room sewing away, in placid unconsciousness of

outside cold and discomfort, when Charlie got home from his first hunt of

the season.

"No water, Lulie?" and the monster took hold of my nice pitcher with a

pair of muddy, half-frozen hands.

"On the gallery, dear, just where mother used to keep it;" and I smiled up

at him angelically.

With a muttered something or other, poor Charlie bounded out to the back

gallery. He came back in a minute, his hands as muddy and cold as ever.

"Look here, Lulie: the water's all frozen in that confounded tin basin out

there."

"I'll have it thawed out for you," I said sweetly, rising as I spoke.

"I say, wifey"--and the great, handsome fellow came close up to me with

his mud and his burs--"do you think it's exactly fair, when a fellow's

been out all the morning shooting ducks for your dinner, to make him stand

out on the gallery such a day as this and scrub the mud off his frozen

hands?"

"That's the way mother did," was all my answer.

"Look here, Lulie, I cry quits. If you'll only let a body off this once,

you may keep house on your own plan, little lady, and I'll never tell you

how mother did it again so long as I live."

"Well, then, don't, that's a dear," I replied, "for you'll only make me

dislike her memory, without doing any good. Just be patient with me,

Charlie, and maybe after a while I'll be as good a housekeeper as your

mother was before me. The mistake you and all other men make is, in

comparing your wives at the end of their first year of housekeeping with

your mothers, whose housekeeping you knew nothing about until it was of

ever so many years' duration. I'm young yet, but I'm improving in that

matter every day, Charlie."

With which little moral lecture I gave Charlie a kiss, and some water to

wash the mud from his poor red hands.

_Moral._--My dear girls, don't you ever marry a man that cannot take his

affidavit he never had a mother, unless it is expressly stipulated in the

marriage contract that he is never to tell you how his mother did it.

J.R. HADERMANN.

The Red Fox: A Tale of New Year's Eve.

It was New Year's Eve, 184-. I and my two little boys, children of five

and seven, were alone in the house. My husband had been unexpectedly

called away on business, and the servant had gone to her friends to spend

the coming holiday.

It was drawing toward night. The cold shadows of the winter twilight were

already falling. A dull red glow in the west told where the sun was going

down. Over the rest of the sky hung heavy gray clouds. A few drops of rain

fell from time to time, and the wind was rising, coming round the corner

of the house with a long, mournful howl like that of a lost hound.

I am not a very nervous person, but I did not like the idea of spending by

myself the long evening that would come after the children's bed-time.

We were living then in a very new place in Michigan, which I shall call

Maysville. My husband, an ex-army officer, had resigned the sword for the

saw-mill. Our house was the oldest in the village, which does not speak

much for its antiquity, as five years before Maysville had been unbroken

forest. The house stood outside the cluster of houses that formed the

little settlement: it was a quarter of a mile to our nearest neighbor.

Now, Maysville calls itself a city, has an academy and a college, and a

great quantity of church in proportion to its population. Then, we "went

to meeting" in a little white-painted, pine box of a thing, like a barn

that had risen in life. The stumps stood about the street: the cows

wandered at will and pastured in the "public square," an irregular

clearing running out into indefinite space. Here also the Indians would

encamp when they came to town from their reservation about five miles

away, and here also, I regret to say, they would sometimes get drunk, and

add what Martha Penney calls "a revolving animosity to the scenery." The

squaws, however, would generally secure the knives and guns before the

quarrelsome stage was reached. Not unfrequently the ladies would bring the

weapons to Mrs. Moore or myself to hide away till their lords and masters

should be sober. Then, feeling secure that no great harm could happen,

they would look on with the utmost placidity at the antics of their better

halves until they dropped down to sleep off their liquor.

There were no Indians in town that night, however, and if there had been,

I was not at all afraid of them, for we were on excellent terms with the

whole reservation. My feeling about staying alone was merely one of those

unreasonable sensations that sometimes overtake people of ill-regulated

minds.

I went to the door and looked out at the gray, angry sky. It was not cold,

but chill. The wind howled and shivered among the leafless branches:

everything promised a storm.

I was not at all sorry to see Mr. and Mrs. Moore drive up in their light

buggy, with their two high-stepping, little brown horses. Mrs. Moore had

in her arms a bundle in a long blue embroidered cloak--a baby, in short.

She and her husband firmly believed this infant to be the most beautiful,

most intelligent and altogether most charming creature which the world had

ever seen. They had been married three years, and little Carry was their

first child.

Mr. and Mrs. Moore were by no means ordinary people. Mrs. Moore--born

Minny or Hermione Adams--was a very small woman, exceedingly pretty, with

light brown curly hair, dark blue eyes and a complexion like an apple

blossom.

Mr. Moore was the son of a Seneca mother and Cherokee father, with not a

drop of white blood in his veins. So he thought, at least, but I never

could quite believe it, because he could and did work, and never so much

as touched even a glass of wine. His parents had died when he was very

young, and he had been brought up and educated by a missionary, a gentle,

scholarly old Presbyterian minister, whose memory his adopted son held in

loving reverence.

The story of our acquaintance with Richard Moore is too long to be told

here. Four years before he had come with us from the Pawnee country. He

had married Minny Adams with the full consent of her parents and the

opposition of all her other friends. Contrary to all prophecies, and with

that inartistic disregard of the probable which events often show, they

had been very happy together.

Mr. Moore--otherwise Wyanota--was a civil engineer, and stood high in his

profession.

"Look here, mamma," he said as he drove up. "Will you take in the wife and

the small child for to-night? I must go away."

"Certainly," said I, overjoyed. "But where are you going, to be caught in

a storm?"

"Oh, they have got into a fuss with the hands over on the railroad, and

have sent for me. I might have known Robinson wouldn't manage when I left

him?"

"Why not?"

"English!" said Wyn, most expressively. "No one can stand the airs he puts

on."

Now, such airs as Mr. Moore possessed--and they were neither few nor far

between--were not put on, but were perfectly natural to him.

"Can't you come in and get your tea?" I asked as he handed me the baby and

helped his wife down.

"No: I must go over directly and compose matters. Good-bye, little woman:

by-bye, baby! Do you know, we think she's beginning to say 'papa?'" said

Wyn, proudly; and then he kissed his wife and child and drove away.

I carried the infant phenomenon into the house and took off its wrappings.

She was my namesake, and I loved the little creature, but I can't say she

was a pretty baby. She was a soft, brown thing, with her father's

beautiful southern eyes and her mother's mouth, but otherwise she

certainly was not handsome. She was ten months old, but she had a look of

experience and wisdom in her wee face that would have made her seem old at

twenty years. She sat on my lap and watched me in a meditative way, as

though she were reviewing her former estimate of my character, and

considering whether her opinions on that subject were well founded. There

was something quite weird and awful in her dignity and gravity.

"Isn't she a wise-looking little thing?" said Minny. "She makes me think

sometimes of the fairy changeling that was a hundred and fifty years old,

and never saw soap made in an egg-shell."

"This baby never would have made such a confession of ignorance, you may

depend. She would not have acknowledged that anything lay out of the range

of her experience. Take your chicken till I get tea, for I am my own girl

to-night."

We had a very merry time over the tea-table and in washing up the dishes.

Until the boys went to bed we were in something of a frolic with them and

the baby, and it was not till the little one was asleep in her crib and Ed

and Charley were quiet in bed that we noticed how wild the weather was

getting.

The rain, which had at first fallen in pattering drops, was now driving in

sheets before a mighty wind, which roared through the woods back of the

house with a noise like thunder. The branches of the huge oaks in the

front yard creaked and groaned as only oak boughs can. The house shook,

the rain lashed the roof, and the wind clawed and rattled the blinds like

some wild creature trying to get in.

"I hope Wyn is safe under shelter,'' said Mrs. Moore.

"He will have reached the end of his journey long before this. I hope he

will have no trouble with the men, but he is not apt to. I pity poor Mr.

Robinson. When Wyn chooses, his extreme politeness is something quite

awful."

"I will say for my husband," observed Mrs. Moore, "that when he sets

himself to work to be disagreeable, he can, without doing one uncourteous

thing, be more aggravating than any one I ever saw in my life."

"It is perfectly evident that he never tries his airs on you, or you would

not speak so. Hear the wind blow!"

"It is no use listening to the weather. The house will stand, I suppose.

Have you got your work? Then let me read to you. It will seem like old

times, before I was married."

Minny Moore was in some respects a very remarkable woman. Though little

Carry was her first baby, she _could_ talk on other subjects. She did not

expect you to listen with rapture to the tenth account of how baby had

said "Da-da," or thrill with agony over the tale of an attack of wind. She

had been her husband's friend and companion before the baby was born: she

did not entirely throw him over now that it had come. She had always been

fond of reading, and she continued to keep up her interest in the world

outside of her nursery. She thought that as her daughter grew up her

mother would be as valuable as a guide and friend if she did not wholly

sink the educated woman in the nurse-maid and seamstress. These habits may

have been "unfeminine," but they certainly made Mrs. Moore much more

agreeable as a companion than if she had been able to talk of nothing but

the baby's clothes, teeth and ailments.

I took out my work, and Minny began to read _Locksley Hall_, which was

then a new poem on this side the water. I had never heard it before, and I

must confess I was much affected--more than I should be now. Mrs. Moore,

however, chose to say that she thought Amy had made a most fortunate

escape, that she had no doubt but the hero would have been a most

intolerable person to live with, and that their marriage, had it come to

pass, would have ended in Amy's taking in sewing to support both herself

and her husband. As for the Squire, why we had no word for his character

but his disappointed rival's, and his drinking might be all a slander. As

to his snoring, why poets might snore as well as other people. If he loved

his wife "somewhat better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse,"

"Why what more," said Mrs. Moore, "could any woman ask of a man given to

horses and hunting? If Calvin Bruce ever cares more for a woman than he

does for his brown pointer and his fast trotter, she may think herself

happy indeed."

At that instant a sudden and furious blast rushed out of the woods, and

tore and shook at the four corners of the house as if to wrench it from

its foundations.

"It's quite awful to hear the wind scream like that," said Minny. "It is

like the banshee. Hark! is not that some one knocking at the back door?"

I listened, and amid the rattling and shaking of blinds and timbers I

heard what sounded like a hurried, impatient knock at the side door. "Who

can it be on such a wild night?" I said, and took the candle and went to

open the door. I set the light in the hall, for I knew the wind would blow

it out. In spite of this precaution, however, the flame was extinguished,

for as I drew back the bolt and lifted the latch the blast threw the door

violently back on its hinges, and rushed into the hall as though exulting

in having finally made an entrance.

"Pretty bad weather, mamma," said some one in the softest, sweetest voice,

like a courteous flute, and there entered my old friend the Black Panther.

This gentleman measured seven feet in his moccasins, and as he stood in

our little entry he looked gigantic indeed. He closed the door with some

difficulty, and I relit the candle.

"You are quite wet through," I said, for the water dripped from his

blanket and woolen hunting-frock. He carried his rifle in his hand, and I

thought the old man looked very tired and sad, and even anxious.

"You all well?" he asked, earnestly.

"Certainly. The captain has gone away, and Minny and the baby are here for

the night. My dear friend, where have you been in this weather? There is a

good fire in the kitchen. Come and get dry there, and let me make you a

cup of hot coffee and get you something to eat."

Here Minny came out into the hall and held up her hands in sunrise.

"Oh, uncle," she said, calling him by the name she had used toward him

since her childhood, "how could you come out in all this rain, and bring

on your rheumatism? How do you think any one is ever going to find dry

clothes for such a big creature as you?"