speaker, evincing a certain piety, which, however, was not to be
construed as at variance with his first statement.
"Wal, 't wa'n't this he took, was it?" demanded the man with the
"Chronicle," waving it wildly.
"Wal, no, 't wa'n't," responded the other, reasonably. The third member
of the party maintained an air of not being in a position to judge, and
regarded Lucyet stolidly as she approached.
"Do, Lucyet?" he observed, unnoticed of the other two.
"I tell you this'll cure him. It'll cure anybody. Just read them
testimonies,"--and he pressed the paper into the other's meagre hand.
"Read that one, 'Rheumatiz of thirty years' standin',--it'll interest
ye."
Lucyet went on up the hill, and turned into the weedy road. She had not
a keen sense of the ridiculous. It did not strike her as funny that they
should have been discussing a patent medicine instead of the verses on
"Spring;" but her shrinking sense of defeat was deepened, and she felt,
with an unconscious resentment, that most people cared very little about
poetry. She wondered, without bitterness, and with a saddened distrust
of her own power, if she could write an advertisement. Once within the
precincts of the tangled road, her disquieted soul rejoiced in the
freedom from observation. She felt as bruised and sore from the
unsympathetic contact of her world as if it had been a larger one; and
with the depression had come a startled sense of the irrevocableness of
what she had done. Those printed words seemed so swift, so tangible.
They would go so far, and afford such opportunity for the grasp of
indifference, of ridicule! If she could only have them again, spoken,
perhaps, but unheard!
Yet here, at least, where the enterprising grass grew in the rugged cart
track, and the branches drooped impertinently before the face of the
wayfarer, no one but herself need know that she was very near to tears.
And as she came out of the shut-in portion of the road to a stretch of
open country, where the warm light lay on the hillsides, and the air was
sweetened by the breath of pines, her depression gave way to a keen
sense of elation. She turned aside and, crossing a bit of elastic, dry
grass, climbed to the top of the stone wall and looked about her. Her
heart throbbed with confidence, doubly grateful for the previous
distrust. Her own lines came back to her; it was this that somehow,
imperfectly, but somehow, she had put into words. It was still spring, a
late New England spring, though the unseasonable warmth of the day made
it seem summer. The landscape bore the coloring of autumn rather than
that of the earlier year. The trees were red and brown and yellow in
their incipient leafage. Now and then, among the sere fields, there was
a streak of vivid green, or a mound of rich brown, freshly turned earth;
but for the most part they were bare. Here and there was the crimson of
a new maple; in the distance were the reds and brown of new, not old,
life. Only the birds sang as they never sing in autumn, a burst of
clear, joyous anticipation--the trill of the meadowlark, the "sweet,
sweet, piercing sweet" of the flashing oriole, the call of the catbird,
and the melody of the white-bosomed thrush. And here and there a
fountain of white bloom showed itself amid the sombreness of the fields,
a pear or cherry tree decked from head to foot in bridal white, like a
bit of fleecy cloud dropped from the floating masses above to the
discouraged earth; along the wayside the white stars of the anemone, the
wasteful profusion of the eyebright, and the sweet blue of the violet;
and in solemn little clusters, the curled up fronds of the ferns,
uttering a protest against longer imprisonment--let wind and sun look
out! they would uncurl to-morrow! All these things set the barely
blossomed branches, the barely clothed hillsides, at defiance. It was
the beginning, not the end, the promise, not the regret--it was life,
not death. Summer was afoot, not winter.
It was worth a longer walk, that half hour on the hillside; for it
restored, in a measure, her sense of enjoyment, and substituted for the
burden of defeat the exultation of expression, however faulty and
however limited. But like other moods, this one was temporary; and as
she retraced her steps and turned into the village street, she felt
again the lassitude which follows the extinction of hope and the
inexorable narrowing of the horizon which she had fancied extended.
It was usual for her at this hour to stop at the tavern for the mail
which might be ready there, and herself take it to the post-office. In
midsummer this mail was quite an important item, but at this time of
year it amounted to little; nevertheless, she followed what had become
the custom. She found one of the daughters of the house in the throes
of composition.
"Oh, Lucyet," she exclaimed, "you don't say that's you! I want this to
go to-night the worst way. Ain't you early?"
"Yes, I guess I am," said Lucyet, rather wearily.
"If you'll set on the piazzer and wait, I'll finish up in just a minute.
You see we had to get dinner for two gentlemen as came down to go
fishin' to-morrer, and it sorter put me back. I wish you'd wait."
"Well, I guess I can wait a few minutes," said Lucyet, the line between
her personal and her official capacity being sometimes a difficult one
to maintain rigidly. She seated herself on the piazza, not observing
that she was just outside of the window of the room within which the two
fishermen were smoking and talking in a desultory fashion. Later their
voices fell idly on her ear, speaking a language she only half
understood, blending with the few lazy sounds of the afternoon. The
conversation was really extremely desultory, being chiefly maintained by
the younger man of the two, who lounged on the sofa of unoriental luxury
with a thorough-going perversion of the maker's plan,--his head being
where his feet ought to have been and his feet hanging over the portion
originally intended for the back of his head. The other man wore the
frown of absorption as, a pencil in his hand, he worried through some
pages of manuscript.
"Oh, I say," observed the idler, "ain't you 'most through slaughtering
the innocents? I want to take that walk."
"I told you half an hour ago that if I could have a few uninterrupted
minutes I'd be with you," answered the other man, without looking up.
"They haven't fallen in my way yet."
"It's pity that moves me to speech," rejoined the first speaker, rising
and sauntering to the window,--not that one outside of which Lucyet was
sitting,--"pity for those young souls throbbing with the consciousness
of power who may have forgotten to enclose a stamp for return. I feel
when I interrupt you as if I were holding back the remorseless wheel of
fate."
His companion allowed this speculative remark to pass without reply. The
idler sauntered back to the table.
"What'll you bet, now, before you go any further, that it'll go into the
waste-basket?"
"Stamped and addressed envelope enclosed," observed the patient editor,
absently.
"Well, what odds will you give me of its being not necessarily devoid of
literary merit, but unfitted for the special uses of your magazine?"
The other was still silent as he laid aside another page.
"Half the time," continued the idler, "to look at you, you wouldn't
believe that you speak the truth when you express your thanks for the
pleasure of reading their manuscripts. It would seem that that, too,
was simulated."
The older man picked up a soft felt hat and threw it across the room at
his companion, without taking his eyes from the page.
"Oh, well," went on the other, "I can read the newspaper. I can read
what is printed, while you're reading what ought to be. Of course you
and I know the things are never the same."
Picking up the paper, he resumed, approximately, his former attitude,
and applied himself to its columns for a few moments of silence. Outside
Lucyet sat quietly, her head resting against the white wooden wall of
the house; and the editor made a mark or two.
"Now this is what the public want to know," resumed the idler, with a
gratuitous air of having been pressed for his opinion. "You editors have
a ridiculous way of talking about the public--"
"It strikes me that it is not I who have been making myself ridiculous
talking about anything."
"The public! You just tell the great innocent public that you are giving
them the sort of thing they like, and half the time they believe you,
and half the time they don't. Now this man"--and he tapped the
"Chronicle"--"knows an editor's business."
"Which is more than you do," interpolated the goaded man.
"'The frame for William Brown's new house is up. William may be trusted
to finish as well as he has begun,'" read the idler, imperturbably.
"'Miss Sophie Brown is visiting friends in Albany. The boys will be glad
to see her back.' 'Fruit of all kinds will be scarce, though berries
will be abundant.'"
The older man stood up, his pencil in his mouth. "Confound you,
Richards! Either you keep still or I go to my room and lock the door."
"Oh, I'll keep still," said Richards, as if it was the first time it
had been suggested. Again there was a silence.
The letter must be to Ada's young man, who was doing a good business in
cash registers, it took so long to write it. It was within five minutes
of the time Lucyet should be at the office. She moved to leave the
piazza, when a not loud exclamation from Richards fell on her ear with
unusual distinctness.
"By Jove! I say, just listen to this."
The editor looked up threateningly, and went back to his work again
without a word.
"No, but really--it's quite in your line. Listen."
Lucyet had moved forward a step or two, when she stood motionless. The
words that floated through the window were her own. Richards had an
unusually sweet voice, and he was reading in a way entirely different
from that in which he had rattled off the "personals." There seemed a
new sweetness in every syllable; the warmth of the hillside, the
perfume of opening apple blossoms, breathed between the lines. He read
slowly, and the words fell on the still air that seemed waiting
breathless to hear them. When he finished, Lucyet was leaning against
the side of the house, her hand on her heart, her eyes shining,--and the
editor was looking at the reader.
"There," he concluded, "ain't there something of the 'blackbird's tune
and the beanflower's boon' in that?"
"Copied, of course?" inquired the editor, briefly.
"No. 'Written for the Daily Chronicle,' and signed 'L.' Not bad, are
they? Of course I don't know," Richards scoffed, "and the public
wouldn't know if it read them, but you know--"
"Read 'em again."
A second time, with increased expression, half mischievous now in its
fervor, the lines on Spring fell in musical tones from Richards's lips.
Still Lucyet stood breathless, her whole being thrilled with an impulse
of exultant, inexpressible delight, listening as she had never listened
before. It was as if she stood in the midst of a shining mist.
"She's got it in her, hasn't she?" Richards added, after a pause.
"Yes," said his companion, slowly. "She's got it in her fast enough;"
and he returned to his page of manuscript. "Much good may it do her!" he
added, with weary cynicism.
Richards laughed, and pulled a pack of cards out of his pocket. "I'll
play solitaire," he said.
"Thank Heaven!" murmured the other, devoutly.
Ada arrived breathless. "Here 'tis," said she. "Did you think I was
never comin'? You've got time enough; they ain't very prompt. There
ain't anythin' the matter, is there?" she asked.
Lucyet took the letter mechanically. "No," she said, "there isn't
anything the matter."
As she went swiftly toward the little post-office the rhythm of those
lines was in her ears; the assured, incisive tones of that man's voice
pulsed through her very soul. She was conscious of no hope for the
future; she had no regret for the past; the present was a glory. In that
moment Lucyet had taken a long, dizzying draught from the cup of
success.
Hearts Unfortified
THE observation train wound its way in clumsy writhings along the bank
of the river, upon which the afternoon light fell in modified brilliancy
as the west kindled towards the sunset. But if the sheen and sparkle of
the earlier day had passed into something more subdued and less
exhilarating, the difference was made up in the shifting action and
color that moved and glowed and flashed on, above and beside the soft
clearness of the stream. The sunlight caught the turn of the wet oars
and outlined the brown muscular backs of the young athletes who were
pulling the narrow shells. The Yale blue spread itself in blocks and
patches along the train, and the Harvard crimson burned in vivid
stretches by its side, and all the blue and crimson seemed instinct
with animation as they floated, quivered, and waved in the thrilled
interest of hundreds of men and women who followed with eager eyes the
knife-blades of boats cleaving the water in a quick, silent ripple of
foam. The crowd of launches, tugs, yachts, and steamers pushed up the
river, keeping their distance with difficulty, and from them as well as
from the banks sounded the fluctuating yet unbroken cheers of
encouragement and exhortation, rising and falling in rhythmic measure,
guided by public-spirited enthusiasts, or breaking out in purely
individual tribute to the grand chorus of partisanship. It had been a
close start, and the furor of excitement had spent itself, somewhat,
during the first seconds, and now made itself felt more like the quick
heart-beats of restrained emotion as the issue seemed to grow less
doubtful, though reaching now and then climaxes of renewed expression.
"Alas for advancing age!" sighed a woman into the ear of her neighbor,
as their eyes followed the crews, but without that fevered intensity
which marked some other glances.
"By all means," he answered. "But why, particularly, just now? I was
beginning to fancy myself young under the stress of present
circumstances."
"Because even if one continues to keep one's emotions
creditably--effervescent--one loses early the single-minded glow of
contest."
"A single-minded glow is a thing that should be retained, even at
considerable cost."
"And what is worse yet, one grows critical about language," she
continued calmly, "and gives free rein to a naturally unpleasant
disposition under cover of a refined and sensitive taste."
Ellis Arnold smiled tolerantly.
"They are pretty sure to keep their lead now," he said. "The other boat
is more than a length behind, and losing. They are not pulling badly,
either," he added. "You were saying?"--and he turned towards her for the
first time since the start.
She was a handsome blonde-haired woman, perfectly dressed, with the seal
of distinction set upon features, figure, and expression.
"That was what I was saying," she replied, "that the ones that are
behind are not pulling badly."
"More sphinx-like than ever," he murmured. "I perceive that you speak in
parables."
Miss Normaine laughed a little. The conversation was decidedly
intermittent. They dropped it entirely at times, and then took it up as
if there had been no pause. It was after a brief silence that she went
on: "But you and I can see both boats--the success, and the
disappointment too. And we can't, for the life of us, help feeling that
it's hard on those who have put forth all their strength for defeat."
"But it isn't so bad as if it were our boat that was behind," he said
sensibly.
"Oh, no; of course not. But I maintain that it injures the _fine fleur_
of enjoyment to remember that there are two participants in a contest."
"I suppose it is useless to expect you to be logical--"
"Quite. I know enough to be entirely sure I'd rather be picturesque."
"But let me assure you, that in desiring that there should be but one
participant in a contest, you are striking at the very root of all
successful athletic exhibitions."
She shrugged her shoulders a little.
"Oh, well, if you like to air your powers of irony at the expense of
such painful literalness!"
"The exuberance of my style has been pruned down to literalness by the
relentless shears of a cold world. With you, of course,"--but he was
interrupted by the shouts of the crowd, as the winning boat neared the
goal. The former enthusiasm had been the soft breathings of approval
compared to this outbreak of the victorious. Flags, hats, handkerchiefs
rose in the air, and the university cheer echoed, re-echoed, and began
again.
Arnold cheered also, with an energy not to be deduced from his hitherto
calm exterior, standing up on the seat and shouting with undivided
attention; and Miss Normaine waved her silk handkerchief and laughed in
response to the bursts of youthful joy from the seat in front of her.
"Oh, well," said Arnold, sitting down again, "sport is sport for both
sides, whoever wins--or else it isn't sport at all."
"Ah, how many crimes have been committed in thy name!" murmured Miss
Normaine.
"Katharine, I think you have turned sentimentalist."
"No, it's age, I tell you. I'm thinking more now of the accessories
than I am of the race. That's a sure sign of age, to have time to notice
the accessories."
Arnold nodded.
"There's compensation in it, though. If we lose a little of the drama of
conflict on these occasions, we gain something in recognizing the style
of presentation."
"Yes," and she glanced down at her niece, whose pretty eyes were making
short work of the sunburned, broad-shouldered, smooth-faced, handsome
boy, who was entirely willing to close the festivities of Commencement
week subjected to the ravages of a grand, even if a hopeless, passion.
From her she looked out upon the now darkening river. There had been
some delay before the train could begin to move back, and the summer
twilight had fallen; for the race had been at the last available moment.
Though it was far from quiet, the relief from the tension of the
previous moments added to the placidity of the scene. The opposite
banks were dim and shadowy, and the water was growing vague; there were
lights on some of the craft; a star came out, and then another; there
were no hard suggestions, no sordid reminders. It was a beautiful world,
filled with happy people, united in a common healthy interest; the
outlines of separation were softened into ambiguity and the differences
veiled by good breeding.
"It is only a mimic struggle, after all," she said at last. "The stage
is well set, and now that the curtain is down, there is no special
bitterness at the way the play ended."
"There you exaggerate, as usual," he replied, "and of course in another
direction from that in which you exaggerated last time."
"The pursuit of literature has made you not only precise but didactic,"
she observed.
"There is a good deal, if not of bitterness, of very real
disappointment, and some depression."
"Which will be all gone long before the curtain goes up for the next
performance."
"Ah, yes, to be sure; but nevertheless you underrate the disappointments
of youth,--because they are not tragic you think they are not
bitter,--you have always underrated them."
She met his eyes calmly, though he had spoken with a certain emphasis.
"We are talking in a circle," she replied. "That was what I said in the
first place--that as we grow older we have more sympathy with defeat."
"You are incorrigible," he said, smiling; "you will accept neither
consolation nor reproof."
"Life brings enough of both," she answered; "it does not need to be
supplemented by one's friends."
The train was moving very slowly; people were laughing and talking gayly
all about them; more lights had come out on the water, and a gentle
breeze had suddenly sprung up.
"Just what do you mean by that, I wonder?" he said slowly.
"Not much," she answered lightly. "But I do mean," she added, as he
looked away from her, "that, whether it be the consequence of the
altruism of the day, or of advancing age, as I said at first, it has
grown to be provokingly difficult to ignore those who lose more serious
things than a college championship. Verestchagin and such people have
spoiled history for us. Who cares who won a great battle now?--it is
such a small thing to our consciousness compared to the number of people
who were killed--and on one side as well as the other."
"Except, of course, where there is a great principle, not great
possessions, at stake?"
"Yes," she assented, but somewhat doubtfully, "yes, of course."
"But it shows a terrible dearth of interest when we get down to
principles."
"Yes," she said again, laughing. Meanwhile Miss Normaine's niece was
pursuing her own ends with that directness which, though lacking the
evasive subtlety of maturer years, is at once effective and commendable.
"It was nothing but a box of chocolate peppermints," she insisted. "I'd
never be so reckless as to wager anything more without thinking it over.
I have an allowance, and I'm obliged to be careful what I spend."
He looked her over with approval.
"You spend it well," he asserted.
"I have to," she returned, "or else boys like you would never look at me
twice."
"I don't know about that." He spoke as one who, though convinced, is not
a bigot.
"It's fortunate that I do," she replied decidedly. "I'm mortifyingly
dependent on my clothes. There's my Aunt Katharine now,--she has an air
in anything."
"I like you better than your aunt," he confessed.
"Of course you do. I've taken pains to have you. But it was just as much
as ever that you looked at me twice last night."
"I was afraid of making you too conspicuous."
"A lot you were!" she retorted rudely. "Who was that girl you danced
with?"
He smiled wearily.
"Tommy Renwick's cousin from the West."
"She is pretty."
"Very good goods."
"Is she as nice as Tommy?"
"No. There are not many girls as nearly right as Tommy."
"Except me."
"Well, perhaps, except you."
"But then, I'm not many."
"No, separate wrapper, only one in a box," he admitted handsomely.
Miss Normaine's niece had dark eyes, brown hair that curled in small
inadvertent rings, and a rich warm complexion through which the crimson
glowed in her round cheeks. She was so pretty that she ought to have
been suppressed, and had a way of speaking that made her charming all
over again.
"It was not chocolate peppermints, and you know quite well it wasn't,"
he said, with the finished boldness compatible with hair parted exactly
in the middle and a wide experience. Miss Normaine's niece opened her
eyes wide.
"What was it?"
"Nothing but your heart."
She considered the matter seriously.
"Was it really?"
"It was really."
"And I've lost," she pondered aloud.
"And you've lost."
She raised her eyes with a glance in which he could read perfect faith,
glad acknowledgment, and entire surrender.
"Do you want me to keep telling you?" she demanded with adorable
petulance.
"There is Henry Donald!" exclaimed Miss Normaine. "I didn't see him
before. He has grown stout, hasn't he?"
"Yes, and bald."
"Isn't he young to be bald and stout too? Do tell me that he is," urged
Miss Normaine with pathos. "He seems just out of college to me, and I
don't like to think that I've lost all sense of proportion."
"Oh, no, you haven't," said Arnold, consolingly. "It's only he that has
lost his. He doesn't take exercise enough. He's coming this way to speak
to you. You had better think of something more flattering to say."
"I never thought Harry Donald would get stout and bald," went on Miss
Normaine, to herself. "There was a period when I let my fancy play
about him, most of the time too, but I never thought of that."
"Who's that man squeezing through the crowd to speak to Aunt Katharine?"
asked Alice.
"That? Oh, that's one of the old boys."
"I can see that for myself."
"He's a Judge Donald of Wisconsin. He's pretty well on, but he's a
Jim-dandy after-dinner speaker. Made a smooth speech at his class
reunion."
"They still like to come to the race and things, don't they?"
"Oh, yes, and they're right into it all while they're here too."
Unhappily unconscious of the kindly feeling being extended to him from
the bench in front, Judge Donald seated himself by Katharine, just as
they drew slowly into the station.