"No," he answered, "I've been busy."
"Oh, we know you've been busy," she interpolated, smiling.
"You're the same Katharine Normaine," he rejoined. "I thought you were,
by the looks, and now I'm sure. You don't really know that I've ever had
a case, but you make me feel that my name echoes through two worlds at
the very least."
"And you are still Harry Donald, suspicious of the gifts that are tossed
into your lap," and they both laughed.
"This is the man of the class," went on Judge Donald, turning to Ellis,
who had taken a seat above them. "Your books have gotten out to
Wisconsin, and that's fame enough for any man."
"Have they really?" said Arnold. "I supposed they only wrote notices of
them in the papers."
"Oh, yes," murmured Miss Normaine. "Ellis has turned out clever,--one
never knows."
"I guess they're good, too," went on Donald; "I tell 'em I used to think
you wrote well in college."
"I thought I did, too," answered Arnold. "I don't believe we're either
of us quite so sure I write well now."
They had delayed their steps to keep out of the crowd, for the people
were leaving the train, some hurrying to catch other trains, some
stopping to greet friends and acquaintances; there was a general rushing
to and fro, the clamor of well-bred voices, the calling out of names in
surprised accost, the frou-frou of gowns and the fragrance of flowers,
in the bare and untidy station.
At last the party of which Miss Normaine was one left the car, and with
the two men she made her way down the platform, through the midst of the
hubbub, which waxed more insistent every moment.
"It is with a somewhat fevered anxiety that I am keeping my eye on
Alice," she said.
"She is with a young man," said Judge Donald.
"That statement has not the merit of affording information. She has been
with a young man ever since we left home."
"It isn't the same one, either," supplemented Arnold.
"It never is the same one," said Miss Normaine, somewhat impatiently. "I
am under no obligation to look after or even differentiate the young
men. I simply have to see that the child doesn't get lost with any one
of them."
"She won't get lost with one," said Arnold, reassuringly, as they were
separated by a cross-current of determined humanity. "She has three now,
and they are all shaking hands at a terrible rate."
Judge Donald departed on a tour of investigation, and returned to say
that there was no chance just at present of their getting away. It was a
scene of confusion which only patience and time could elucidate. The
omniscience of officials had given place to a less satisfactory if more
human ignorance; last come was first served, and a seat in a train
seemed by no means to insure transportation. It was as well to wait for
a while outside as in; so with many others they strolled up and down,
until their car should be more easily accessible.
"Alice is an example of the profound truths we have been enunciating,
Ellis," said Miss Normaine. "She has an ardent admirer on the defeated
crew. At one time I did not know but his devotion might shake her
lifelong allegiance to the other university; but now that victory has
fairly perched, you observe she has small thought for the bearers of
captured banners. We were saying, Mr. Arnold and I," she explained to
Donald, "that it is at our time of life that people begin to remember
that when somebody beats, there is somebody else beaten."
Donald grew grave,--as grave as a man can be with the feathers of an
unconscious girl tickling one ear and a fleeting chorus of the latest
"catchy" song penetrating the other.
"Arnold and I can appreciate it better than you, I guess," he said,
"because there have been times when we thought it highly probable we
might get beaten ourselves."
"Highly," assented Arnold.
"But you, Miss Normaine, you've never had any difficulty in getting in
on the first floor," went on the other. "You've quaffed the foam of the
beaker and eaten the peach from the sunniest side of the wall right
along--I'm quite sure of it just to look at you."
"The Scripture moveth us in sundry places," said Katharine, with a
lightness that did not entirely veil something serious, "not to put too
much faith in appearances. Even I am not above learning a lesson now and
then."
He looked at her curiously.
"I'd like to know by what right you haven't changed more," he said.
"Did you expect to find me in ruins, after--let me see, how many years?"
she laughed. "The hand of Time is heavy, but not necessarily
obliterating. _What_ has become of Alice?"
"She can't have gone far," said Arnold. "She was with us a moment ago."
"There she is with some of the rest of your party--I caught a glimpse of
her just now," added Donald. "She's quite safe."
Alice stood talking with a girl of her own age and two or three
undergraduates, on the outskirts of the crowd. One of the youths wore in
his buttonhole the losing color, but he bore himself with a proud
dignity that forbade casual condolences. Alice's eyes were bright, and
her pretty laugh rippled forth with readily communicated mirth, while
the very roses of her hat nodded with the spirit of unthinking gayety.
"There's the car that belongs to our fellows," said, half to himself,
the person of sympathies alien to those of his present companions. "They
must be about--yes, they're getting on," he added, as a car which had
been propelled from a neighboring switch stopped at the farther end of
the station. Alice's head turned with a swiftness of motion that set the
roses vibrating as if a sudden breeze had ruffled their petals.
"The crew?" she asked.
"Yes," assented the young man.
She turned more definitely towards him, away from the rest of the group,
whose attention was called in another direction.
"Will you do something for me, Mr. Francis?"
"Why, of course."
Alice had not anticipated refusal, and her directions were prompt and
lucid.
"Please go into that car and ask Mr. Herbert to come out to the
platform, at the other end, to speak to me. There isn't much time to
lose, so please be quick."
As he lifted his hat and moved away, she joined in the conversation of
the others, which seemed to be largely metaphorical.
"So he got it that time," one of the young men was explaining, "where
Katy wore the beads."
"Well, it served him quite right," said Alice, with the generosity of
ignorance. Her whole attention was apparently given to the matter in
hand, but she was standing so that she could see the somewhat vague
vestibule of the brilliant but curtained car.
"Oh, yes, but it wasn't on the tintype that the other fellow should have
been there at all."
"No, to be sure, but that made it all the better," said Alice's friend,
with sympathetic vision.
"Why, there's Eugene Herbert!" exclaimed Alice. "I really must go and
tell him that he pulled beautifully, if he didn't win, and comforting
things like that! Don't go off without me."
Before comment could be framed upon their lips, she had left her
companions and was slipping quickly down the platform.
"She knows him very well," said the other girl; "she'll be back in a
minute."
"She must have sharp eyes," said another of the group, as he looked
after her. But too many people were about for fixed attention to be
bestowed upon a single figure. There was but one light under the roof of
that part of the station where a young man was standing, looking rather
sulkily up and down. Alice was a little breathless with her rapid walk
when she reached him.
"I thought Francis was giving me a song and dance," he said, as he
grasped the hand she held out.
"No, I sent him," she explained hurriedly. "And I wanted to say--" She
paused an instant as she looked up at him.
He was serious, and wore a look of fatigue, in spite of the superb
physical health of his whole appearance. The light fell across her face
under the dark brim of her hat, and touched its beauty into something
vividly apart from the shadows and sordidness of the place, yet paler
than its sunlit brilliancy.
"I wanted to say," she went on bravely, "that I've changed my mind. At
least, I didn't really have any mind at all. And if you still want me
to--" she paused again, but something in his eyes reassured her--"I
will--I'd really _like_ to, you know, and _please_ be quiet, there isn't
but a minute to say it in--and I'd never have told you--at least not for
years and _years_--if you had won the race. Now let go of my hand--there
are _hundreds_ of people all about--and you can come and see me
to-morrow."
It was all over in a moment. She had snatched her hand away, and was
speeding back with a clear-eyed look of conscious rectitude, and he had
responded to the exhortations of divers occupants of the car, backed by
a disinterested brakeman, and stepped aboard.
"Oh, well, there's another race next year," he said to somebody who
spoke to him as he sat down in the end seat. It was early for such
optimism, and they thought Herbert had a disgustingly cheerful
temperament.
Alice returned just as Miss Normaine and Arnold came up, and they all
went back together, collecting the rest of the party as they went to
their train. It was a vivacious progress along the homeward route. Pæans
of victory and the flash of Roman candles filled the air. At one time,
when some particular demonstration was absorbing the attention of the
men, Miss Normaine found her niece at her side.
"Aunt Katharine, you know I've always adored you," she said, with a
repose of manner that disguised a trifle of apprehension.
"Yes, I know, Alice, but I really can't promise to take you anywhere
to-morrow. I--"
"I don't want you to--I only want to confide in you."
"Oh, dear, what have you been doing now?"
"I think," replied Alice, while the chorus of sound about them swelled
almost to sublimity, "that I've been getting engaged--to Eugene Herbert,
you know."
"Only to Eugene Herbert," breathed Miss Normaine. "I'm glad it occurred
to you to mention it. But why didn't you say so before?"
"It didn't--it wasn't--before," said Alice, faltering an instant under
the calmly judicial eye of her aunt. "You see," she went on quickly, "it
was because they lost the race. It wouldn't have been at all--not anyway
for a long time,"--and again her mental glance swept the vista of the
years she had mentioned to Herbert himself,--"if it hadn't been for
that; but I couldn't let him go back without either the race or--or
me," she concluded ingenuously.
Arnold had been talking with a man of his own age, and hearing things
that were very pleasant to hear about his latest work, and yet, as he
leaned back in his chair and looked across at Katharine Normaine, whose
own expression was a little pensive, he sighed. It was a great deal--he
told himself it was nearly everything--to have what he had now in the
line of effort which he loved and had chosen. It was not so good as the
work itself, of course, but the recognition was grateful. And as his
eyes dwelt again upon the distinction of Miss Normaine's profile, with
the knot of blonde hair at the back of her well-held head, he sighed
again, as he rose and went over to her. She looked up at him, and her
eyes were not quite so calm as usual.
"I am sitting," she said, "among the ruins."
"Indeed?" he said. "Is there room upon a fallen column or a broken
plinth for me?"
"Oh, yes," she answered, "but it is not for a successful man like you,
whose name is upon the public lips, to gaze with me upon demolished
theories."
"I have taken my time in gazing upon them before now," he observed.
"Everybody is talking about your book," she said.
"Oh, no, only a very few people. But about your theories--which of them
has proved itself unable to bear the weight of experience?"
"You may remember I dwelt somewhat at length upon the indifference of
happy youth to the stings of outrageous fortune when supported by some
one else?"
"I remember. I regard it as the lesson for the day."
"It's early to mention it, but I am obliged to give you the evidence of
my error--honor demands it--and Alice will not mind, even if she sees
fit to contradict it to-morrow;" and she told him what had just been
told her.
He smiled as she concluded her statement, and she, meeting his glance in
all seriousness, broke down into a moment's laughter.
"'She does not know anything but that her side is beating,'" he quoted
meditatively.
"I thought my generosity in confession might at least forestall
sarcasm," she said severely.
"It ought to do so," he admitted.
There was a moment's pause.
"Has youth itself changed with the times, I wonder?" he speculated.
"Certainly you did not sympathize overmuch with defeat at Alice's age."
She did not answer, and she was looking away from him through the glass,
beyond which the darkness was pierced now and then by a shaft of
illumination. The pensiveness that had rested on her face, when he had
looked across the car at her, had deepened almost into sadness.
"And now," he went on, "you have called me successful--which shuts me
out from your more mature sympathy."
Still she did not answer. He bent a little nearer to her.
"Believe me, Katharine," he said, "my success is not so very
intoxicating after all. I need sympathy of a certain kind as much as I
did twenty years ago."
She glanced at him.
"Is that all you want?" she asked with a swift smile.
"No," he returned boldly; and she looked away again, out into the
darkness through which they were rushing.
"I had hoped," he went on, "that my so-called success might be something
to offer you after all this time--something you would care for--and now
I find that your ideals are all reversed. I have not won much, but I
have won a little, and you tell me to-day that it is only extreme youth
that cares for the winners."
"And that I have found out that I was mistaken." Her voice was low, but
quite clear. "Have I not told you that, too?"
"And about experience of life making us care the more for those who fail
in everything?"--he waited a moment. "You have not mentioned that that
was a mistake also. I wish you'd stop looking out of that confounded
window," he added irritably, "and look at me. Heaven knows I've failed
in some things!"
She laughed a little at his tone, but she did not follow his suggestion.
"Oh, no," she said, "you have succeeded."
"And that means--what?"
"I told you I was sitting among the ruins of my theories," she said,
while a faint color, which he saw with sudden pleasure, rose in her
cheek.
"That adverse theory--has that gone too?"
"I have had enough of theories," she declared softly. "What I really
care for is success."
Her Neighbors' Landmark
THE sun had not quite disappeared behind the horizon, though the days no
longer extended themselves into the long, murmurous twilight of summer;
instead, the evening fell with a certain definiteness, precursor of the
still later year.
On the step of the door that led directly into the living-room of his
rambling house sat Reuben Granger, an old man, bent with laborious
seasons, and not untouched by rheumatism. The wrinkles on his face were
many and curiously intertwined; his weather-beaten straw hat seemed to
supply any festal deficiency indicated by the shirt-sleeves; and his dim
eyes blinked with shrewdness upon the dusty road, along which, at
intervals, a belated wagon passed, clattering. His days of usefulness
were not over, but he had reached the age when one is willing to spend
more time looking on. He had always been tired at this hour of the day,
but it was only of late that fatigue had had a certain numbing effect,
which disinclined him to think of the tasks of tomorrow. He came to this
period of repose rather earlier nowadays, and after less sturdy
labor--somehow, a great deal of the sturdy labor got itself done without
him; and there was an acquiescence in even this dispensation perceptible
in the fall of his knotted hands and the tranquil gaze of his faded
eyes.
About a dozen yards beyond him, on the doorstep leading directly into
the living-room of a house which joined the other, midway between two
windows (the union marked by a third doorway unused and boarded up,
around whose stone was the growth of decades), sat Stephen Granger. His
weather-beaten straw hat shaded eyes dim also, but still keen; and a
network of curious wrinkles wandered over his tanned and sun-dried
skin. Upon his features, too, dwelt that look of patient tolerance that
is not indifference, that only the "wise years" can bring; and on his
face as well as his brother's certain lines about the puckered mouth
went far to contradict it. If one saw only one of the old men, there was
nothing grim in the spectacle--that of a weary farmer looking out upon
the highroad from the shelter of his own doorway; but the sight of them
both together took on suddenly a forbidding air, a suggestion of
sullenness, of dogged resolution; they were so precisely alike, and they
sat so near one another on thresholds of the same long, low building,
and they seemed so unconscious the one of the other. It was impossible
not to believe the unconsciousness wilful and deliberate. A heavily
freighted and loose-jointed wagon rattled noisily but slowly along the
road.
"Howaryer?" called out one of its occupants.
"'Are yer?" returned Stephen Granger.
Reuben had opened his mouth to speak, but closed it in silence, while he
gazed straight before him, unseeing, apparently, and unheeding. The
leisurely driver checked his horse, which responded instantly to the
welcome indication. Behind him in the wagon two calves looked somewhat
perplexedly forth, their mild eyes, with but slightly accentuated
curiosity, surveying the Grangers and the landscape from the durance of
the cart.
"Been tradin'?" asked Stephen.
"Wal, yes, I have," answered the other, with that lingering intonation
that seems to modify even the most unconditional assent.
"Got a good bargain?"
"Wal, so-so."
"Many folks down to the store this evenin'?"
"Wal, considerable."
"Ain't any news?"
"Not any as I know on."
Stephen nodded his acceptance of this state of things. The other nodded,
too. There was a pause.
"G'long," said the trader, as if he would have said it before if he had
thought of it. But the horse had taken but a few steps when another
voice greeted him.
"Howaryer, Monroe?" said Reuben Granger.
"Whoa," said Monroe. "Howaryer?"
"Been down to the Centre?" asked Reuben.
"Yare."
"Got some calves in there, I see."
"Wal, yes; been doin' some tradin'."
Reuben nodded. "Ain't any news, I take it?"
"None in partickler." Another exchange of nods followed.
"G'long," said Monroe, after a short silence, during which the calves
looked more bored than usual. But the shaky wheels had made but a few
revolutions before the owner of the wagon reined in again.
"Say," he called back, twisting himself around and resting his hand on
the bar that confined the calves. "They've took down the shed back of
the meetin'-house. Said 'twas fallin' to pieces. Might 'a' come down on
the heads of the hosses. Goin' to put up a new one." Then, as his steed
recommenced its modest substitute for a trot, unseen of the Grangers he
permitted himself an undemonstrative chuckle. "They can sorter divide
that piece of news between 'em," he said to his companion, who had been
the silent auditor of the conversation. A moment of indecision on the
part of the Grangers had given him time to make this observation, but it
was not concluded when Reuben's cracked voice sang out cheerfully, "Ye
don't say!" A slight contraction passed over Stephen's face. Much as he
would have liked to mark the bit of information for his own, now that it
had been appropriated by another, he gave no further sign. The noise of
the wagon died along the road, and still Reuben and Stephen Granger sat
gazing straight before them at the hill which faced them from the other
side of the way, at the foot of which the darkness was falling fast. By
and by a lamp was lighted in one half of the house, and a moment later
there was a flash through the window of the other, and slowly and
stiffly the two old men rose and went inside, each closing his door
behind him.
"Them's the Granger twins," had said the owner of the calves in answer
to his companion's question as soon as they were out of hearing. "Yes,
they be sort of odd. Don't have nothin' to say to one another, and
they've lived next door to each other ever since they haven't lived
_with_ each other. It's goin' on thirty years since they've spoke. Yes,
they do look alike--I don't see no partickler difference myself, and it
would make it kinder awk'ard if they expected folks to know which one
he's talkin' to. But they don't. They're kinder sensible about that.
They're real sensible 'bout some things," he added tolerantly. "Oh, they
was powerful fond of each other at first--twins, y' know. They was
always together, and when each of 'em set up housekeepin', nothin' would
do for it but they should jine their houses and live side by side--they
knew enough not to live together, seein' as how, though they was twins,
their wives wasn't. So they took and added on to the old homestead, and
each of 'em took an end. Wal, I dunno how it began--no, it wasn't their
wives--it don't seem hardly human natur', but it wasn't their wives."
The speaker sighed a little. He was commonly supposed to have gained
more experience than felicity through matrimony. "I've heard it said
that it was hoss-reddish that begun it. You see, they used to eat
together, and Stephen he used to like a little hoss-reddish along with
his victuals in the spring, and Reuben, he said 't was a pizen weed.
But there! you can never tell; they're both of 'em just as sot as--as
erysipelas; and when that's so, somethin' or other is sure to come. I
know for a fact that Reuben always wanted a taste of molasses in his
beans, and Stephen couldn't abide anythin' but vinegar. So, bymeby, they
took to havin' their meals separate. You know it ain't in human natur'
to see other folks puttin' things in their mouths that don't taste good
to yours, and keep still about it."
His companion admitted the truth of this statement.