BOOK II

I

Patience watched the dusty hills of San Francisco, the sparkling bay

alive with sail and spar, the pink mountains of the far coast range, the

brown hills opposite the grey city, willowed and gulched and bare, the

forts on rock and points, until the wild lurching of the steamer over

the bar directed her attention to the unhappy passengers. In a short

while she had not even these to amuse her, nothing but a grey plain and

empty decks. At first she felt a waif in space; but soon a delightful

sense of independence stole over her, of freedom from all the ills and

responsibilities of life. The land world might have collapsed upon its

fiery heart, so little could it affect her while that waste of waters

slid under the horizon.

The few passengers came forth restored in a day or two. A husband and

wife and several children did not interest Patience; neither did the

captain’s wife, in whose charge she was. A young girl with a tangle of

yellow hair under a sailor hat was more inviting, but she flirted

industriously with the purser and took not the slightest notice of

Patience. Her invalid mother reclined languidly in a steamer chair and

read the novels of E. P. Roe.

The only other passenger was an elderly gentleman who read books in

white covers neatly lettered with black which fascinated Patience. She

was beginning to long for books. The invalid lent her a Roe, but she

returned it half unread. As the old gentleman had never addressed her,

did not seem to be aware of her existence, she could hardly expect a

similar courtesy from him.

She was glowering upon universal stupidity one morning when he appeared

on deck with a carpet bag, from which, after comfortably establishing

himself in his steamer chair, he took little white volume after little

white volume. Patience’s curiosity overcame her. She went forward slowly

and stood before him. He looked up sharply. His black eyes, piercing

from their shaggy arches, made her twitch her head as if to fling aside

some penetrative force. His very beard, silver though it was, had a

fierce sidewise twist. His nose was full nostrilled and drooped

scornfully. The spectacles he wore served as a sort of lens for the fire

of his extraordinary eyes.

“Well?” he said gruffly.

“Please, sir,” said Patience, humbly, “will you lend me a book?”

“Book? I don’t carry children’s literature round with me.”

“I don’t read children’s literature.”

“Oh, you don’t? Well, not ‘The Chatterbox,’ I suppose; but I have

nothing of Pansy’s nor yet of The Duchess.”

“I wouldn’t read them if you had,” cried Patience, angrily. “Perhaps

I’ve read a good many books that you haven’t re-read so long ago

yourself. I’ve read Dickens and Thackeray and Scott, and,” with a

shudder, “Gibbon’s ‘Rome’ and Thiers’ ‘French Revolution.’”

“Oh, you have? Well, I beg your pardon. Sit down, and I’ll see if I can

find something for a young lady of your surprising attainments.”

Patience, too pleased to resent sarcasm, applied herself to his elbow.

“Why are they all bound alike?” she asked.

“This is the Tauchnitz edition of notable English and American books.

How is this?” He handed her a volume of Grace Aguilar.

“No, sir! I’ve tried her, and she’s a greater bore than Jane Austen.”

“Oh, you want a love story, I suppose?” His accentuation was fairly

sardonic.

“No, I don’t,” she said with an intonation which made him turn and

regard her with interest. Then once more he explored his bag.

“Will this suit you?” He held out a copy of Carlyle’s “French

Revolution.”

Patience groaned. “Didn’t I tell you I’d just read Thiers’?”

“This isn’t Thiers’. Try it.” And he took no further notice of her.

Patience opened the volume, and in a few moments was absorbed. There was

something in the storm and blare of the style which struck a responsive

chord. She did not raise her head until dinner time. She scarcely spoke

until she had finished the volume, and then only to ask for the second.

For several days she felt as if the atmosphere was charged with

dynamite, and jumped when any one addressed her. The owner of the

Tauchnitz watched her curiously. When she had finished the second volume

she told him that she did not care for anything more at present. She

leaned over the railing most of the day, watching the waves. Toward

sunset the gentleman called peremptorily,—

“Come here.”

Patience stood before his chair.

“Well, what do you think of it?” he demanded. “Tell me exactly what your

impressions are.”

“I feel as if there was an earthquake in my skull and all sorts of

pictures flying about, and exploded pieces of drums and trumpets, and

kings and queens. I think Carlyle must have been made on purpose to

write the French Revolution. It was—as if—there was a great picture of

it made on the atmosphere, and when he was born it passed into him.”

“Upon my word,” he said, “you are a degree or two removed from the

letters of bread and milk. You are a very remarkable kid. Sit down.”

Patience took the chair beside him. “He made my head ache,” she added.

“I feel as if it had been hammered.”

“I don’t wonder. Older heads have felt the same way. What’s your name?”

“Patience Sparhawk.”

“Tell me all about yourself.”

“Oh, there isn’t much to tell,” and she frowned heavily.

“Don’t look so tragic—you alarm me. I’m convinced there is a great

deal. Come, I want to know.”

Patience gave a few inane particulars. The old gentleman snorted. “It’s

evident you’ve never been interviewed,” he said grimly. “Now, I’ll tell

you who I am, and then you won’t mind talking about yourself. There’s

nothing so catching as egotism. My name is James E. Field. I own one of

the great newspapers of New York, of which I am also editor-in-chief. Do

you know what that means? Well, if you don’t, let me tell you. It is to

be a man more powerful than the President of the United States, for he

can make presidents, which is something the president himself can’t do.

He knows more about people’s private affairs than any of intimate

relationship; he has his finger on the barometer of his readers’ brain;

he can make them sensational or sober, intellectually careless or

exacting; he can keep them in ignorance of all that is best worth

knowing of the world’s affairs, by snubbing the great events and

tendencies of the day and vitiating their brain with local crimes and

scandals, or he can illumine their minds and widen their brain cells by

not only enlarging upon what every intelligent person should wish to

know, but by making such matter of profound interest; he can ignore

science, or enlighten several hundred thousand people; he can add to the

happiness of the human race by exposing abuses and hidden crime, or he

can accept hush money and let the sore fester; he can lash the unrest of

the lower classes, or chloroform it; he can use the sledge hammer, the

rapier, and the vitriol, or give over his editorial page to windy

nothings; he can demolish political bosses, or prolong their career. In

short, his power is greater than Alexander’s was, for he is a general of

minds instead of brute force.”

“My goodness gracious!” exclaimed Patience. “What sort of a paper have

you got?”

He laughed. “Wait until you’ve lived in New York awhile and you’ll find

out. Its name is the ‘Day,’ and it has made a president or two, and made

one or two others wish they’d never been born. By the way, I didn’t tell

you much about myself, did I? The auxiliary subject carried me away. I’m

married, and have several sons and daughters, and am off for a rest—not

from the family but from the ‘Day.’ I’ve been round the world. That will

do for the present. Tell me all about Monterey.”

With consummate skill he extracted the history of her sixteen years. On

some points she fought him so obstinately that he inferred what she

would not tell. He ended by becoming profoundly interested. He was a man

of enthusiasms, which sometimes wrote themselves in vitriol, at others

in the milk of human kindness. His keen unerring brain, which Patience

fancied flashed electric search lights, comprehended that it had

stumbled upon a character waging perpetual war with the pitiless Law of

Circumstance, and that the issue might serve as a plot for one of the

mental dramas of the day.

“Your experience and the bad blood in you, taken in connection with your

bright and essentially modern mind, will make a sort of intellectual

anarchist of you,” he said. “I doubt if you take kindly to the domestic

life. You will probably go in for the social problems, and ride some

polemical hobby for eight or ten years, at the end of which time you

will be inclined to look upon your sex as the soubrettes of history.

Your enthusiasm may make you a faddist, but your common sense may aid

you in the perception of several eternal truths which the women of

to-day in their blind bolt have overlooked.”

A moment later he repented his generalisations, for Patience had

demanded full particulars. Nevertheless, he gave her many a graphic

outline of the various phases of current history, and was the most

potent educational force that she had yet encountered. She preferred him

to books and admired him without reserve, trotting at his heels like a

small dog. His unique and virile personality, his brilliant and

imperious mind, magnetised the modern essence of which she was made.

There was nothing of the old-fashioned intellectual type about him. He

might have induced the coining of the word “brainy,”—he certainly typed

it. Although he had the white hair and the accumulated wisdom of his

years, he had the eyes of youth and the fist of vigour at any age. One

day when two natives looked too long upon Patience’s blondinity, as she

and Mr. Field were exploring a banana grove during one of their brief

excursions on shore, he cracked their skulls together as if they had

been two cocoanuts.

Patience laughed as the blacks dropped sullenly behind. “How funny that

they should admire me,” she said. “I’m not pretty.”

“Well, you’re white. Besides, there is one thing more fascinating than

beauty, and that is a strong individuality. It radiates and magnetises.”

“Have I all that?” Patience blushed with delight.

He laughed good-naturedly. “Yes, I’ll stake a good deal that you have.

You may even be pretty some day; that is, if you ever get those freckles

off.”

Inherent as was her passion for nature, she enjoyed the rich beauty of

the tropics the more for the companionship of a mind skilled in

observation and interpretation. It was her first mental comprehension of

the law of duality.

As they approached New York harbour Mr. Field said to her: “I think I’ll

have to make a newspaper woman of you. When you have finished your

education, don’t think of settling down to any such humdrum career as

that of the school-teacher. Come to me, and I’ll put you through your

paces. If I’m not more mistaken than I’ve been yet, I’ll turn out a

newspaper woman that will induce a mightier blast of woman’s horn. Think

you’d like it?”

“I’d like to be with you,” said Patience, on the verge of tears.

“Sha’n’t I see you again till I’m eighteen?”

“No, I don’t want to see or hear from you again until you’ve kneaded

that brain of yours into some sort of shape by three years of hard

study. Then I’ll go to work on a good foundation. You haven’t told me if

you’ll take a try at it.”

“Of course I will. Do you think I want to be a school-teacher? I should

think it would be lovely to be a newspaper woman.”

“Well, it isn’t exactly lovely, but it is a good training in the art of

getting along without adjectives. Now look round you and I’ll explain

this harbour; and don’t you brag any more about your San Francisco

harbour.”

They entered through The Narrows, between the two toy forts. A few lone

sentries paced the crisp snow on the heights of Staten Island, and

looked in imminent danger of tumbling down the perpendicular lawns. The

little stone windows of the earthen redoubts seemed to wink confidently

at each other across the water, and loomed superciliously above the

forts on the water’s edge. Long Island, had the repose of a giant that

had stretched his limbs in sleep, unmindful of the temporary hamlets on

his swelling front. Staten Island curved and uplifted herself

coquettishly under her glittering garb and crystal woods. Far away the

faint line of the New Jersey shore, looking like one unbroken city on a

hundred altitudes, hovered faintly under its mist. The river at its base

was a silver ribbon between a mirage and a stupendous castle of seven

different architectures surmounted by a golden dome—which same was New

York and the dome of a newspaper. Then a faint fairy-like bridge,

delicate as a cobweb, sprang lightly across another river to a city of

walls with windows in them—which same was Brooklyn. Under the shadow of

the arches was a baby island fortified with what appeared to be a large

Dutch cheese out of which the mice had gnawed their way with much

regularity. The great bay, blue as liquid sapphire, was alive with craft

of every design: rowboats scuttled away from the big outgoing steamers;

sails, white as the snow on the heights, bellied in the sharp wind;

yellow and red ferry boats gave back long symmetrical curves of white

smoke; gaunt ships with naked spars lay at rest. On Liberty Island the

big girl pointed solemnly upward as if reminding the city on the waters

of the many mansions in the invisible stars. Snow clouds were scudding

upward from the east, but overhead there was plentiful gold and blue.

Patience gazed through Mr. Field’s glass, enraptured, and promised not

to brag. As they swung toward the dock he laid his hand kindly on hers.

“Now don’t think I’m callous,” he said, “because I part from you without

any apparent regret. You are going to be in good hands during the rest

of your early girlhood, and I could be of no assistance to you; and I am

a very busy man. Let me tell you that you have made this month a good

deal shorter than it would otherwise have been; and when we meet again

you won’t have to introduce yourself. There are my folks, and there goes

the gang-plank. Good-bye, and God bless you.”

II

Patience leaned over the upper railing, looking at the expectant crowd

on the wharf, wondering when the captain would remember her. She felt a

strong inclination to run after Mr. Field. As he receded up the wharf,

surrounded by his family, he turned and waved his hand to her.

“Why couldn’t he have been Mr. Foord’s brother or something?” she

thought resentfully. “I think he might have adopted me.”

As the crowd thinned she noticed two elderly women standing a few feet

from the vessel, alternately inspecting the landed passengers and the

decks. One was a very tall slender and graceful woman, possessed of that

subtle quality called style, despite her unfashionable attire. In her

dark regular face were the remains of beauty, and although nervous and

anxious, it wore the seal of gentle blood. Her large black eyes

expressed a curious commingling of the spiritual and the human. She was

probably sixty years old. At her side was a woman some ten years

younger, of stouter and less elastic figure, with a strong dark kind

intelligent face and an utter disregard of dress. She carried several

bundles.

“Oh, hasn’t she come?” cried the elder woman. “Can she have died at sea?

I am sure the dear Lord wouldn’t let anything happen to her. Dear

sister, _do_ you see her?”

The other woman, who was also looking everywhere except at Patience,

replied in a round cheerful voice: “No, not yet, but I feel sure she is

there. The captain hasn’t had time to bring her on shore. The Lord tells

me that it is all right.”

“One of those is Miss Tremont,” thought Patience, “I may as well go

down. They appear to be frightfully religious, but they have nice

faces.”

She ran down to the lower deck, then across the gang-plank.

“I’m Patience Sparhawk,” she said; “are you—” The older woman uttered a

little cry, caught her in her arms, and kissed her. “Oh, you dear little

thing!” she exclaimed, and kissed her again. “How I’ve prayed the dear

Lord to bring you safely, and He has, praise His holy name. Oh, I am so

glad to see you. I do love children so. We’ll be so happy together—you

and I and Him—and, oh, I’m so glad to see you.”

Patience, breathless, but much gratified, kissed her warmly.

“Don’t forget me,” exclaimed the other lady. She had a singularly hearty

voice and a brilliant smile. Patience turned to her dutifully, and

received an emphatic kiss.

“This is my dear friend, my dear sister in the Lord, Miss Beale,

Patience,” said Miss Tremont, flurriedly, “and she wanted to see you

almost as much as I did.”

“Indeed I did,” said Miss Beale, breezily. “I too love little girls.”

“I’m sure you’re both very kind,” said Patience, helplessly. She hardly

knew how to meet so much effusion. But something cold and old within her

seemed to warm and thaw.

“You dear little thing,” continued Miss Tremont. “Are you cold? That is

a very light coat you have on.”

Patience was not dressed for an eastern winter, but her young blood and

curiosity kept her warm.

“Here comes the captain,” she said. “Oh, no, I’m all right. I like the

cold.”

The captain, satisfying himself that his charge was in the proper hands,

offered to send her trunk to Mariaville by express, and Patience, wedged

closely between the two ladies, boarded a street car.

“You know,” exclaimed Miss Tremont, “I knew the Lord would bring you to

me safely in spite of the perils of the ocean. Every night and every

morning I prayed: _Dear_ Lord, don’t let anything happen to her,—and I

knew He wouldn’t.”

“Does He always do what you tell Him?” asked Patience.

“Almost everything I ask Him,—that is to say, when He thinks best. Dear

Patience, if you knew how He looks out for me—and it is well He sees

fit, for dear knows I have a time taking care of myself. Why, He even

takes care of my purse. I’m always leaving it round, and He always sends

it back to me—from counters and trains and restaurants and everywhere.

And when I start in the wrong direction He always whispers in my ear in

time. Why, once I had to catch a certain train to Philadelphia, where I

was to preside at a convention, and I’d taken the wrong street car, and

when I jumped off and took the right one, the driver said I couldn’t

possibly get to the ferry in time. So I just shut my eyes and prayed;

and then I told the driver that it would be all right, as I had asked

the Lord to see that I got there in time. The driver laughed, and said:

‘W-a-a-l, I guess the Lord’ll go back on you this time.’ But I caught

that ferry-boat. _He_—the Lord—made it five minutes late. And it’s

always the same. He takes care of me, praised be His name.”

“You must feel as if He were your husband,” said Patience, too gravely

to be suspected of irreverence.

“Why, He is. Doesn’t the Bible say—” But the car began to rattle over

the badly paved streets, and the quotation was lost.

Patience looked eagerly through the windows at purlieus of indescribable

ugliness; but it was New York, a city greater than San Francisco, and

she found even its youthful old age picturesque. The dense throng of

people in Sixth Avenue and the immense shop windows induced expressions

of rapture.

“You don’t live here, do you?” she said with a sigh.

“Oh, Mariaville is much nicer than New York,” replied Miss Beale, in her

enthusiastic way. “I hate a great crowded city. It baffles you so when

you try to do good.”

“Still they do say that reform work is more systematised here, dear

sister.”

“Forty-second Street,” shouted the conductor, and they changed cars. A

few moments later they were pulling out of the Grand Central Station for

Mariaville.

Miss Beale had asked the conductor to turn a seat, and Patience faced

her new friends. As they left the tunnel she caught sight of a tiny bow

of white ribbon each wore on her coat.

“Why do you wear that?” she asked.

“Why, we’re W. C. T. U’s,” replied Miss Beale.

“Wctus?”

“Temperance cranks,” said Miss Tremont, smiling.

“Temperance cranks?”

“Why, have you never heard of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union?”

asked Miss Beale, a chill breathing over her cordial voice. “The

movement has reason to feel encouraged all through the West.”

“I’ve never heard of it. They don’t have it in Monterey, and I’ve not

been much in San Francisco.”

“She’s such a child,” said Miss Tremont. “How could she know of it out

there? But now I know she is going to be one of our very best Y’s.”

“Y’s?” asked Patience, helplessly. She wondered if this was the “fad”

Mr. Field had predicted for her, then recalled that he had alluded once

to the “Temperance movement,” but could not remember his explanation, if

he had made any. Doubtless she had evaded a disagreeable topic. But now

that it was evidently to be a part of her new life she made no attempt

to stem Miss Tremont’s enthusiasm.

“The Y’s are the young women of the Union; we are the W’s. It is our

lifework, Patience, and I am sure you will become as much interested in

it as we are, and be proud to wear the white ribbon. We have done so

much good, and expect to do much more, with the dear Lord’s help. It is

slow work, but we shall conquer in the end, for He is with us.”

“What do you do,—forbid people to sell liquor?”

Both ladies laughed. They were not without humour, and their experience

had developed it. “No,” said Miss Tremont, “we don’t waste our time like

that.” She gave an enthusiastic account of what the Union had

accomplished. Her face glowed; her fine head was thrown back; her dark

eyes sparkled. Patience thought she must have been a beautiful girl. She

had a full voice with odd notes of protest and imperious demand which

puzzled her young charge. One would have supposed that she was

constantly imploring favours, and yet her air suggested natural hauteur,

unexterminated by cultivated humility.

“I should think it was a good idea,” said Patience, with perfect

sincerity.

“Oh, there’s dear Sister Watt,” cried Miss Tremont, and she rose

precipitately, and crossing the aisle sat down beside a careworn

anxious-eyed woman who also wore the white ribbon.

“Come over by me until Miss Tremont comes back,” said Miss Beale, with

her brilliant smile. “Tell me, don’t you love her already? Oh, you have

no idea how good she is. She is heart and soul in her work, and just

lives for the Lord. She sometimes visits twenty poor families a week,

besides her Temperance class, her sewing school, her Bible Readings, her

Bible class, and all the religious societies, of which she is the most

active worker. She is also the Mariaville agent for the Society for

Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and trustee of the Bible Society. You

should hear her pray. I have heard all the great revivalists, but I have

never heard anything like Miss Tremont’s prayers. How I envy you living

with her! You’ll hear her twice a day, and sometimes oftener. She has a

nice house on the outskirts of Mariaville. Her father left it to her

twenty years ago, and she dedicated it to the Lord at once. It is

headquarters for church meetings of all sorts. She has a Bible reading

one afternoon a week. Any one can go, even a servant, for Miss Tremont,

like all true followers of the Lord, is humble.”

Patience reflected that she had never seen any one look less humble than

Miss Beale. In spite of her old frock she conveyed with unmistakable if

unconscious emphasis that she possessed wealth and full knowledge of its

power.

“You look so happy,” Patience said, her curiosity regarding Miss Tremont

blunted for the present. “Are you?”

“Happy? Of course I am. I’ve never known an unhappy moment in my life.

When my dear parents died, I only envied them. And have I not perfect

health? Is not every moment of my time occupied?—why, I only sleep six

hours out of the twenty-four. And Him. Do I not work for Him, and is He

not always with me?”

“They are so funny about God,” thought Patience. “She talks as if He

were her beau; and Miss Tremont as if He were her old man she’d been

jogging along with for forty years or so.—Do you live alone?” she

asked.

“Yes—that is, I board.”

“And don’t you ever feel lonesome?”

“Never. Is not He always with me?” Her strong brown face was suddenly

illuminated. “Is He not my lover? Is He not always at my side,

encouraging me and whispering of His love, night and day? Why, I can

almost hear His voice, feel His hand. How could I be lonesome even on a

desert island with no work to do?”

Patience gasped. The extraordinary simplicity of this woman of fifty

fascinated her whom life and heredity had made so complex. But she moved

restlessly, and felt an impulse to thrust out her legs and arms. She had

a sensation of being swamped in religion.

“I shouldn’t think you’d like boarding,” she said irrelevantly.

“I don’t like it particularly, but it gives me more time for my work. I

make myself comfortable, I can tell you, for I have my own bed with two

splendid mattresses,—my landlady’s are the hardest things you ever

felt,—and all my own furniture and knick-knacks. And I have my own tub,

and every morning even in dead of winter, I take a cold bath. And I

don’t wear corsets—”

“Mariaville,” called the conductor.

“Oh, here we are,” cried Miss Tremont. She made a wild dive for her

umbrella and bag, seized Patience by the hand, and rushed up the aisle,

followed leisurely by Miss Beale.

The snow was falling heavily. Patience had watched it drift and swirl

over the Hudson, and should have liked to give it her undivided

attention.

As they left the station they were greeted by a chorus of shrieks: “Have

a sleigh? Have a sleigh?”

“What do you think, sister?” asked Miss Tremont, dubiously. “Do you

think Patience can walk two miles in this snow? I don’t like to spend

money on luxuries that I should give to the Lord.”

“Perhaps the sleigh man needs it,” said Patience, who had no desire to

walk two miles in a driving storm.

“We’d better have a sleigh,” said Miss Beale, decidedly. “We will each

pay half.”

“But why should you pay half,” said Miss Tremont, in her protesting

voice, “when there are three of us?”

“I will pay for myself,” said Patience. “Mr. Foord gave me a twenty

dollar gold piece, and I haven’t spent it.”

“Oh, dear child!” exclaimed Miss Tremont. “As if I’d let you.”

“Come, get in,” said Miss Beale; “we’ll be snowed under, here.”

And a few minutes later Patience, on the front seat, was enjoying her

first sleigh-ride. She slid down under the fur robe, and winking the

snow stars from her lashes, looked out eagerly upon Mariaville. The town

rose from the Hudson in a succession of irregular precipitous terraces.

The trees were skeletons, the houses old, but the effect was very

picturesque; and the dancing crystals, the faint music of bells from far

and near, the wide steep streets, delighted a mind magnetic for novelty.

They left Miss Beale before a pretty house, standing in a frozen garden,

then climbed to the top of a hill, slid away to the edge of the town,

and drew rein before an old-fashioned white one-winged house, which

stood well back in a neglected yard behind walnut-trees and hemlocks.

Beyond, closing the town, were the stark woods. Opposite was a prim

little grove in which the snow stars were dancing.

“Here we are,” said Miss Tremont, climbing out. “Welcome home, Patience

dear.” She paid the man, and hurried down the path. The door was opened

by an elderly square-faced woman, who looked sharply at Patience, then

smiled graciously.

“Patience, this is Ellen. She takes good care of me. Come in. Come in.”

The narrow hall ran through the main building, and was unfurnished but

for a table and the stair. Miss Tremont led the way into a large double

room of comfortable temperature, although no fire was visible. Bright

red curtains covered the windows, a neat black carpet sprinkled with

flowers the floor. The chairs were stiffly arranged, but upholstered

cheerfully, the tables and mantels crowded with an odd assortment of

cheap and handsome ornaments. The papered walls were a mosaic of family

portraits. In the back parlour were a bookcase, a piano piled high with

hymn-books, and a dozen or so queer little pulpit chairs. A door opened

from the front parlour into a faded but hospitable dining-room.

Patience for the first time in her life experienced the enfolding of the

home atmosphere, an experience denied to many for ever and ever. She

turned impulsively, and throwing her arms about Miss Tremont, kissed and

hugged her.

“Somehow I feel all made over,” she said apologetically, and getting

very red. “But it is so nice—and you are so nice—and oh, it is all so

different!”

And Miss Tremont, enraptured, first wished that this forlorn homely

little waif was her very own, then vowed that neither should ever

remember that she was not, and half carried her up to the bedroom

prepared for her, a white fresh little room overlooking the shelving

town.

III

The next afternoon a sewing woman came and cut down an old-fashioned but

handsome fur-lined cloak of Miss Tremont’s to Patience’s diminutive

needs. When Miss Tremont returned home, after a hard day’s work, she

brought with her a hood, a pair of woollen gloves, and a pair of

arctics; and Patience felt that she could weather a New York winter.

But Patience gave little attention to her clothes. When she was not

watching the snow she was studying the steady stream of people who

called at all hours, and invariably talked “church” and “temperance.”

The atmosphere was so charged with religion that she was haunted by an

uneasy prescience of a violent explosion during which Miss Tremont and

her friends would sail upward, leaving her among the débris.

Her coat finished, she went in town with Miss Tremont to Temperance

Hall. The snow had ceased to fall. The sun rode solitary on a cold blue

sky, the ground was white and hard. The bare trees glittered in their

crystal garb, icicles jewelled the eaves of the houses. The telegraph

wires, studded with pendent spheres, looked like a vast diamond necklace

of many strings which only Nature was mighty enough to wear. The hills

were snowdrifts. The Hudson, far below, moved sluggishly under great

blocks of ice. The Palisades were black and white. Miss Tremont and

Patience walked rapidly, their frozen breath waving before them in

fantastic shapes. It was all very delightful to Patience, who thrust her

hands into her deep pockets and would have scorned to ride. At times she

danced; new blood, charged with electricity, seemed shooting through her

veins. Miss Tremont’s older teeth clattered occasionally. She bent

forward slightly, her brow contracted over eyes which seemed ever

seeking something, her long legs carrying her swiftly and with

surprising grace. Patience had solved the enigma of her voice after

hearing her pray, and she supposed that her eyes were on loyal watch for

the miseries of the world.

After a time they descended an almost perpendicular hill to the business

part of the town. Beyond a few level streets the ground rose again,

wooded and thickly built upon. On the left was another hill, which, Miss

Tremont informed her, was Hog Heights, the quarter of the poor.

The streets in the valley twisted and doubled like the curves of an

angry python. In the centre was a square which might have been called

Rome, since all ways led to it.

Temperance Hall, a building of Christian-like humility, stood on a back

street flanked by many low-browed shops. On the first floor were the

parlour, reading-room, and refectory, on the second a large hall, on the

third bedrooms. The hall was already half full of boys and girls, kept

in order by the matron, Mrs. Blair, a middle-aged woman with the

expression of one who stands no nonsense.

“Now, Patience,” said Miss Tremont, “you listen attentively, and next

time you can take Mrs. Blair’s place.”

The occasion was the weekly assemblage of the Loyal Legion children, who

were being educated in the ways of temperance. Miss Tremont opened with

the Lord’s Prayer, which she invested with all its meaning; then the

children sang from a temperance hymn-book, and the lesson began. Miss

Tremont read a series of questions appurtenant to the inevitable results

of unholy indulgence, to which Mrs. Blair read the answers, which in

turn were repeated by the children. Then they sang “Down with King

Alcohol,” a minister came in and made a dramatic address, and the

children, some of whom were attentive and some extremely naughty, filed

out.

“I only come on alternate Fridays,” said Miss Tremont, as they went

downstairs; “Sister Beale takes the other. Come and see our

reading-room. These are our boarders,” indicating several prim old maids

that sat in the front room by the window.

In the dining-room a half dozen tramps were imbibing free soup. The

reading-room was empty.

IV

Before a week had passed Patience was so busy that her old life slept as

heavily as a bear in winter. She passed her difficult examinations and

entered the High School, selecting the three years course, which

included French, German, mathematics, the sciences, literature, and

rhetoric.

The recesses and evenings were spent in study, the afternoons in

assisting Miss Tremont; occasionally she snatched an hour to write to

her friends in California. Besides the temperance work, she had a class

in the church sewing school, kept the books of various societies, and

occasionally visited the poor on Hog Heights. The work did not interest

her, but she was glad to satisfactorily repay Miss Tremont’s

hospitality. But had she wished to protest she would have realised its

uselessness: she was carried with the tide. It might be said that Miss

Tremont was the tide. Her enthusiasm had no reflex action, and tore

through obstacles like a mill-race. When night came she was so weary

that more than once Patience offered to put her to bed; but the offer

was declined with a curious mixture of religious fervour and hauteur.

Miss Tremont had none of the ordinary vanity of woman, but she resented

the imputation that she could not work for the Lord as ardently at sixty

as she had at forty.

When she prayed Patience listened with bated breath. A torrent of

eloquence boiled from her lips. All the shortcomings and needs of

unregenerate Mariaville, individual and collective, were laid down with

a vehement precision which could leave the Lord little doubt of His

obligations. The Temperance Cause was rehearsed with a passion which

would have thrilled the devil. Sounding through all was a wholly

unselfconscious note of command, as when one pleads with the pocket of

an intimate friend for some worthy cause.

Patience saw so many disreputable people at this time that her mother’s

pre-eminence was extinguished. They had a habit of commanding the

hospitalities of Miss Tremont’s barn, sure of two meals and a night’s

lodging. Miss Tremont insisted upon their attendance at evening prayers,

and Patience assumed the task of persuading them to clean up. Her

methods were less gentle than Miss Tremont’s: when they refused to wash

she turned the hose on them.

Projected suddenly into the dry bracing cold of an eastern winter she

quickly became robust. Before spring had come, her back was straight and

a faint colour was in her rounding cheeks. If there had been time to

think about it, or any one to tell her, she would have discovered that

she was growing pretty. But at this time, despite the distant advances

of the High School boys, Patience found no leisure for vanity. Sometimes

she paused long enough to wonder if she had any individuality left; if

environment was not stronger than heredity after all; if immediate

impressions could not ever efface those of the past, no matter how

deeply the latter may have been etched into the plastic mind. But she

was quite conscious that she was happy, despite the vague restlessness

and longings of youth. She loved Miss Tremont with all the sudden

expansion of a long repressed temperament endowed with a tragic capacity

for passionate affection. In Monterey the iron mould of reserve into

which circumstance had forced her nature, had cramped and warped what

love she had felt for Mr. Foord and Rosita; but in this novel

atmosphere, where love enfolded her, where everybody respected her, and

knew nothing of her past, where there was not a word nor an occurrence

to remind her of the ugly experiences of her young life, she quickly

became a normal being, living, belatedly, along the large and generous

lines of her nature.

She had no friends of her own age with whom to discuss the problems dear

to the heart of developing woman. The girls at the High School rarely

talked during recess, and she left hurriedly the moment the scholars

were dismissed for the day. The “Y’s” she persistently refused to join,

as well as the young people’s societies of Miss Tremont’s church.

“I’ll be your helper in everything,” she said to her perplexed guardian;

“but those girls bore me, and, you know, I really haven’t time for

them.”

And Miss Tremont, despite the fact that Patience gave no sign of

spiritual thaw, was the most doting of old maid parents. After the first

few weeks she ceased to dig in Patience’s soul for the stunted seeds of

Christianity, finding that she only irritated her, and trusting to the

daily sprinkling of habit and example to promote their ultimate growth.

V

With summer came a cessation of school, Loyal Legion, and sewing school

duties; but the Poor took no vacation and gave none. Nevertheless,

Patience had far more leisure, and borrowed many books from the town

library. She read much of Hugo and Balzac and Goethe, and in the new

intellectual delight forgot herself more completely than in her work.

Moreover, the town was very beautiful in summer, and she spent many

hours rambling along the shadowy streets whose venerable trees shut the

sunlight from the narrow side ways. The gardens too were full of trees;

and the town from a distance looked like a densely wooded hillside, a

riot of green, out of which housetops showed like eggs in a nest. Over

some of the steep old streets the maples met, growing denser and denser

down in the perspective, until closed by the flash of water.

The woods on the slope of the Hudson were thick with great trees

dropping a leafy curtain before the brilliant river, and full of

isolated nooks where a girl could read and dream, unsuspected of the

chance pedestrian.

After one long drowsy afternoon by a brook in a hollow of the woods,

Patience returned home to find a carriage standing before the door. It

was a turnout of extreme elegance. The grey horses were thoroughbreds; a

coachman in livery sat on the box; a footman stood on the sidewalk. She

looked in wonder. Miss Tremont had no time for the fine people of

Mariaville, and they had ceased to call on her long since. Moreover,

Patience knew every carriage in the town, and this was not of them.

She went rapidly into the house, youthfully eager for a new experience.

Miss Tremont was seated on the sofa in the front parlour, holding the

hand of a tall handsomely gowned woman. Patience thought, as she stood

for a moment unobserved, that she had never seen so cold a face. It was

the face of a woman of fifty, oval and almost regular. The mouth was a

straight line. The clear pale eyes looked like the reflection of the

blue atmosphere on icicles. The skin was as smooth as a girl’s, the

brown hair parted and waved, the tall figure slender and superbly

carried. She was smiling and patting Miss Tremont’s hand, but there was

little light in her eyes.

As Patience entered, she turned her head and regarded her without

surprise; she had evidently heard of her. Miss Tremont’s face illumined,

and she held out her hand.

“This is Patience,” she said triumphantly. “I haven’t told you half

about the dear child. Patience, this is my cousin, Mrs. Gardiner Peele.”

Mrs. Gardiner Peele bent her head patronisingly, and Patience hated her

violently.

“I am glad you have a companion,” said the lady, coldly. “But how is it

you haven’t the white ribbon on her?”

Miss Tremont blushed. “Oh, I can’t control Patience in all things,” she

said, in half angry deprecation. “She just won’t wear the ribbon.”

Mrs. Peele smiled upon Patience for the first time. It was a wintry

light, but it bespoke approval. “I wish she could make you take it off,”

she said to her relative. “That dreadful, dreadful _badge_. How can you

wear it?—you—”

“Now, cousin,” said Miss Tremont, laughing good-naturedly, “we won’t go

over all that again. You know I’m a hopeless crank. All I can do is to

pray for you.”

“Thank you. I don’t doubt I need it, although I attend church quite as

regularly as you could wish.”

“I know you are good,” said Miss Tremont, with enthusiasm, “and of

course I don’t expect everybody to be as interested in Temperance as I

am. But I do wish you loved the world less and the Lord more.”

Mrs. Peele gave a low, well modulated laugh. “Now, Harriet, I want you

to be worldly for a few minutes. I have brought you back two new gowns

from Paris, and I want you, when you come to visit me next week, to wear

them. I have had them trimmed with white ribbon bows so that no one will

notice one more or less—”

“I’m not ashamed of my white ribbon,” flashed out Miss Tremont, then

relented. “You dear good Honora. Yes, I’ll wear them if they’re not too

fashionable.”

“Oh, I studied your style. And let me tell you, Harriet Tremont, that

fashionable gowns are what you should be wearing. It does provoke me so

to see you—”

But Miss Tremont leaned over and kissed her short. “Now what’s the use

of talking to an old crank like me? I’m a humble servant of my dear

Lord, and I couldn’t be anything else if I had a million. But you dear

thing, I’m so glad to see you once more. You do look so well. Tell me

all about the children.”

Patience, quite forgotten, listened to the conversation with deep

interest. There was a vague promise of variety in this new advent. As

she watched the woman, who seemed to have brought with her something of

the atmosphere of all that splendid existence of which she had longingly

read, she was stirred with a certain dissatisfaction: some dormant chord

was struck—as on the day she drove by Del Monte. When Mrs. Peele arose

to go, she thought that not Balzac himself had ever looked upon a more

elegant woman. Even Patience’s untrained eye recognised that those long

simple folds, those so quiet textures, were of French woof and make. And

the woman’s carriage was like unto that of the fictional queen. She

nodded carelessly to Patience, and swept out. When Miss Tremont returned

after watching her guest drive away, Patience pounced upon her.

“_Who_ is she?” she demanded. “And _why_ didn’t you tell me you had such

a swell for a cousin?”

“Did I never tell you?” asked Miss Tremont, wonderingly. “Why, I was

sure I had often talked of Honora. But I’m so busy I suppose I forgot.”

She sat down and fanned herself, smiling. “Honora Tremont is my first

cousin. We used to be great friends until she married a rich man and

became so dreadfully fashionable. The Lord be praised, she has always

loved me; but she lives a great deal abroad, and spends her winters,

when she is here, in New York. They have a beautiful place on the

Hudson, Peele Manor, that has been in the family for nearly three

hundred years. Mr. Peele is an eminent lawyer. I don’t know him very

well. He doesn’t talk much; I suppose he has to talk so much in Court.

I’ve not seen the children for a year. I always thought them pretty

badly spoiled, particularly Beverly. May isn’t very bright. But I always

liked Hal—short for Harriet, after me—better than any of them. She is

about nineteen now. May is eighteen and Beverly twenty-four.

“Then there is Honora, cousin Honora’s sister Mary’s child, and the

tallest woman I ever saw. Her parents died when she was a little thing

and left her without a dollar. Honora took her, and has treated her like

her own children. Sometimes I think she is very much under her

influence. I don’t know why, but I never liked her. She is Beverly’s

age. Oh!” she burst out, “just think! I have got to go to Peele Manor

for a week. I promised. I couldn’t help it. And oh, I do dread it. They

are all so different, and they don’t sympathise with my work. Much as I

love them I’m always glad to get away. Wasn’t it kind and good of her to

bring me two dresses from Paris?”

Patience shrewdly interpreted the prompting of Mrs. Peele’s generosity,

but made no comment.

Miss Tremont drew a great sigh: “My temperance work—my poor—what will

they do without me? Maria Twist gets so mad when I don’t read the Bible

to her twice a week. Patience, you will have to stay in Temperance Hall.

I shouldn’t like to think of you here alone. I do wish Honora had asked

you too—”

“I wouldn’t go for worlds. When do you think your dresses will come? I

do so want to see a real Paris dress.”

“She said they’d come to-morrow. Oh, to think of wearing stiff tight

things. Well, if they are uncomfortable or too stylish I just won’t wear

them, that’s all.”

“You just will, auntie dear. You’ll not look any less fine than those

people, or I’ll not go near Hog Heights.”

Miss Tremont kissed her, grateful for the fondness displayed. “Well,

well, we’ll see,” she said.

But the next day, when the two handsome black gowns lay on the bed of

the spare room, she shook her head with flashing eyes.

“I won’t wear those things,” she cried. “Why, they were made for a

society woman, not for an humble follower of the Lord. I should be

miserable in them.”

Patience, who had been hovering over the gowns,—one of silk grenadine

trimmed with long loops of black and white ribbon, the other of satin

with a soft knot of white ribbon on the shoulder and another at the back

of the high collar,—came forward and firmly divested Miss Tremont of

her alpaca. She lifted the heavy satin gown with reverent hands and

slipped it over Miss Tremont’s head, then hooked it with deft fingers.

“There!” she exclaimed. “You look like a swell at last. Just what you

ought to look like.”

Miss Tremont glanced at the mirror with a brief spasm of youthful

vanity. The rich fashionable gown became her long slender figure, her

unconscious pride of carriage, far better than did her old alpaca and

merino frocks. But she shook her head immediately, her eyes flashing

under a quick frown.

“The idea of perching a white bow like a butterfly on my shoulder and

another at the back of my neck, as if I had a scar. It’s an insult to

the white ribbon. And this collar would choke me. I can’t breathe. Take

it off! Take it off!”

“Not until I have admired you some more. You look just grand. If the

collar is too high, I’ll send for Mrs. Best, and we’ll cut it off and

sew some soft black stuff in the neck—although I just hate to. Auntie

dear, don’t you think you could stand it?”

Miss Tremont shook her head with decision. “I couldn’t. It hurts my old

throat. And how could I ever bend my head to get at my soup? And these

bows make me feel actually cross. If the dress can be made comfortable

I’ll wear it, for I’ve no right to disgrace Honora, nor would I hurt her

feelings by scorning her gowns; but I’ll not stand any such mockery as

these flaunting white things.”

Patience exchanged the satin for the grenadine gown. This met with more

tolerance at first, as the throat was finished with soft folds, and the

white ribbon was less demonstrative.

“It floats so,” said Patience, ecstatically. “Oh, auntie, you _are_ a

beauty.”

“I a beauty with my ugly scowling old face? But this thing is like a

ball dress, Patience—this thin stuff! I prefer the satin.”

“You will wear this on the hot evenings. All thin things are not made

for the ball-room. You needn’t look at yourself like that. I only wish

I’d ever be half as pretty. Auntie, why didn’t you ever marry?”

Miss Tremont’s face worked after all the years. Memories could not die

in so uniform a nature.

“My youth was very sad,” she said, turning away abruptly. “I only talk

about it with the dear Lord.” And Patience asked no more questions.

VI

The dressmaker was sent for, and the satin gown divested of its collar.

Miss Tremont ruthlessly clipped off the beautiful French bows and sewed

a tiny one of narrow white ribbon in a conspicuous place on the left

chest. The grenadine was decorated in like manner. Patience wailed, and

then laughed as she thought of Mrs. Gardiner Peele. She wished she might

be there to see that lady’s face.

Miss Tremont changed her mind four times as to the possibility of

leaving Mariaville for a week of sinful idleness, before she was finally

assisted into the train by Patience’s firm hand. Even then she abruptly

left her seat and started for the door. But the train was moving.

Patience saw her resume her seat with an impatient twitch of her

shoulders.

“Poor auntie,” she thought, as she walked up the street; “but on the

whole I think I pity Mrs. Peele more.”

Her bag had been sent to Temperance Hall, and she went directly there,

and to her own room. As the day was very warm, she exchanged her frock

for a print wrapper, then extended herself on the bed with “’93.” It was

her duty to assuage the wrath of Maria Twist, but she made up her mind

that for twenty-four hours she would shirk every duty on her calendar.

But she had failed to make allowance for the net of circumstance. She

had not turned ten pages when she heard the sound of agitated footsteps

in the hall. A moment later Mrs. Blair opened the door unceremoniously.

Her usually placid face was much perturbed.

“Oh, Miss Patience,” she said, “I’m in such a way. Late last night a

poor man fell at the door, and I took him in as there was no policeman

around. I thought he was only ill, but it seems he was drunk. He’s been

awake now for two hours, and is awful bad—not drunk, but suffering.”

“Why don’t you send for the doctor?” asked Patience, lazily.

“I have, but he’s gone to New York and won’t be back till night. The man

says he can doctor himself—that all he wants is whisky; but of course I

can’t give him that. Do come over and talk to him. Miss Beale is over at

White Plains, and I don’t know what to do.”

Patience rose reluctantly and followed the matron to the side of the

house reserved for men. As she went down the hall she heard groans and

sharp spasmodic cries. Mrs. Blair opened a door, and Patience saw an

elderly man lying in the bed. His grey hair and beard were ragged, his

eyes dim and bleared, his long, well-cut but ignoble face was greenishly

pale. He was very weak, and lay clutching at the bed clothes with limp

hairy hands. As he saw the matron his eyes lit up with resentment.

“I didn’t come here to be murdered,” he ejaculated. “It’s the last place

I’d have come to if I’d known what I was doing. But I tell you that if I

don’t have a drink of whisky I’ll be a dead man in an hour.”

“I can’t give you that,” said Mrs. Blair, desperately. “And you know you

only think you need it, anyhow. We try to make men overcome their

terrible weakness; we don’t encourage them.”

“That’s all right, but you can’t reform a man when his inside is on fire

and feels as if it were dropping out—but my God! I can’t argue with

you, damn you. Give it to me.”

“I’m of the opinion that he ought to have it,” said Patience.

The man turned to her eagerly. “Bless you,” he said. “It’s not the taste

of it I’m craving, miss; it’s relief from this awful agony. If you give

it to me, I swear I’ll try never to touch a drop again after I get over

this spree. It’ll be bad enough to break off then, but it’s death now.”

Mrs. Blair looked at him with pity, but shook her head.

“I’ve been here seven years,” she said to Patience, “and the ladies have

yet to find one fault with me. I don’t dare give it to him. Besides, I

don’t believe in it. How can what’s killing him cure him? And it’s a

sin. Even if the ladies excused me—which they wouldn’t—I’d never

forgive myself.”

“I’ll take the responsibility,” said Patience. “I believe that man will

die if he doesn’t have whisky.”

The man groaned and tossed his arms. “Oh, my God!” he cried.

Mrs. Blair shuddered. “Oh, I don’t know, miss. If you will take the

responsibility—I can’t give it to him—where could you get it?”

“At a drug store.”

“They won’t sell it to you—we’ve got a law passed, you know.”

“Then I’ll go to a saloon.”

“Oh, my! my!” cried Mrs. Blair, “you’d never do that?”

“The man is in agony. Can’t you see? I’m going this minute.”

The door opened, and Miss Beale entered. She looked warm and tired, but

came forward with active step, and stood beside the bed. A spasm of

disgust crossed her face. “What is the matter, my man?” she asked. “I am

sorry to see you here.”

“Give me whisky,” groaned the man.

Miss Beale turned away with twitching mouth.

“The man is dying. Nothing but whisky can save him,” said Patience. “If

you called a doctor he would tell you the same thing.”

“What?” said Miss Beale, coldly, “do you suppose that he can have whisky

in Temperance Hall? Is that what we are here for? You must be crazy.”

“But you don’t want him to die on your hands, do you?” exclaimed

Patience, who was losing her temper.

“My God!” screeched the man, “I am in Hell.”

“My good man,” said Miss Beale, gently, “it is for us to save you from

Hell, not to send you there.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.” His voice died to an inarticulate

murmur; but he writhed, and doubled, and twisted, as men may have done

when fanatics tortured in the name of religion.

“Good heavens, Miss Beale,” cried Patience, excitedly, “you can’t set

yourself up in opposition to nature. That man must have whisky. If he

were younger and stronger it wouldn’t matter so much; but can’t you see

he hasn’t strength to resist the terrible strain? The torture is killing

him, eating out his life—”

“Oh, it is terrible!” exclaimed the matron. “Perhaps it is best—”

“Mrs. Blair!” Miss Beale turned upon her in consternation. Then she bent

over the man.

“You can’t have whisky,” she said gently; “not if I thought you were

really dying would I give it to you. If it is the Lord’s will that you

are to die here you must abide by it. I shall not permit you to further

imperil your soul. Nor could that which has not the blessing of God on

it be of benefit to you. Alcohol is a destroyer, both of soul and of

body—not a medicine.”

The man’s knees suddenly shot up to his chest; but he raised his head

and darted at her a glance of implacable hate.

“Damn you,” he stuttered. “Murderer—” Then he extended rigid arms and

clutched the bed clothes, his body twitching uncontrollably.

Miss Beale looked upon him with deep compassion. “Poor thing,” she

exclaimed, “is not this enough to warn all men from that fiend?” She

laid her hand on the man’s head, but he shook it off with an oath.

“Whisky,” he cried. “O my God! Have these women—_women!_—no pity?”

“I’m going for whisky—” said Patience.

Miss Beale stepped swiftly to the door, locked it, and slipped the key

into her pocket.

“You will buy no whisky,” she said sternly. “I will save you from that

sin.” Suddenly her face lit up. “I will pray,” she said solemnly, “I

will pray that this poor lost creature may recover, and lead a better

life—”

“I swear I’ll never touch another drop after I’m out of this if you’ll

give it to me now—”

“If it be the Lord’s will that you shall live you will not die,” said

Miss Beale. “I will pray, and in His mercy He may let you live to

repent.”

She fell upon her knees by the bed, and clasping her hands, prayed

aloud; while the man reared and plunged and groaned and cursed, his

voice and body momentarily weaker. Miss Beale’s prayers were always very

long and very fervid. She was not eloquent, but her deep tear-voiced

earnestness was most impressive; and never more so than to-day, when she

flung herself before the throne of Grace with a lost soul in her hand. A

light like a halo played upon her spiritualised face, her voice became

ineffably sweet. Gradually, in her ecstatic communion with, her intimate

nearness to her God, she forgot the man on the bed, forgot the flesh

which prisoned her soaring soul, was conscious only of the divine light

pouring through her, the almost palpable touch of her lover’s hand.

Suddenly Patience exclaimed brutally: “The man is dead.”

Miss Beale arose with a start. She drew the sheet gently over the

distorted face. “It is the Lord’s will,” she said.

After Patience was in her own room and had relieved her feelings by

slamming the door, she sat for a long time staring at the pattern of the

carpet and pondering upon the problem of Miss Beale.

“Well,” she thought finally, “_she’s_ happy, so I suppose it’s all

right. No wonder she’s satisfied with herself when she lives up to her

ideals as consistently as that. I think I’ll label all the different

forms of selfishness I come across. There seems to be a large variety,

but all put together don’t seem to be a patch to having fun with your

ideals. Miss Beale would be the most wretched woman in Westchester

county if she’d given that man whisky and saved his life.”

VII

The man was buried with Christian service at Miss Beale’s expense, and

her serene face wore no shadow. The following day she said to Patience:

“I spent nearly all of the last two nights in prayer, and I almost heard

the Lord’s voice as He told me I did right.”

“You ought to write a novel,” said Patience, drily, but the sarcasm was

lost. In a moment Patience forgot Miss Beale: the postman handed her two

letters, and she went up to her room to read them.

The first she opened was from Miss Tremont.

PEELE MANOR, Friday.

Oh my dear darling little girl, how I wish, _how_ I wish I were

with you and my work once more. I ought to be happy because they

are all so kind, but I’m not. I feel as if I were throwing away

one of the few precious weeks I have left to give to the Lord

(arrange for a prayer meeting on Wednesday, the day of my

return, and we’ll have a regular feast of manna). Do you miss

me? I think of you every moment. You should have seen dear

Cousin Honora’s face when I came down to dinner in the black

satin. She didn’t say anything, she just _looked_ at the bow,

and I felt sorry for her. But I know I am right. Hal giggled and

winked at me. (I do love Hal!) Honora Mairs said so sweetly

after Cousin Honora had left the room: “Dear Cousin Harriet, I

think you are so brave and consistent to wear the little white

bow of your cause. It is so _like_ you.” Was not that sweet of

her? Beverly has very heavy eyebrows, and he raised them at my

ribbon, and turned away his head as if it hurt his eyes. He is a

very elegant young gentleman, and his mother says he is a great

stickler for form, whatever that may mean. (They speak a

different language here anyway. I don’t understand half what

they say. Hal talks slang all the time.) I don’t like Beverly as

much as I did, although he’s quite the handsomest young man I

ever saw and very polite; but he smokes cigarettes all the time

and big black cigars. When I told him that five hundred million

dollars were spent annually on tobacco, he got up and went off

in a huff. May is just a talkative child—I never heard any one

talk so much in my life,—and about nothing but gowns and young

men and balls and the opera. Beverly talks about horses all the

time, and Hal thinks a great deal of society, although she

listens to me very sweetly when I talk to her about my work.

Yesterday she said: “Why, Cousin Harriet, you’re a regular steam

engine. It must be jolly good fun to carry a lot of sinners to

heaven on an express train.” I told her it was a freight train,

and it certainly is, as you know, Patience dear. She replied:

“Well, if you get there all the same, a century more or less

doesn’t make any difference. You must be right in it with the

Lord.” That was the only time I’d heard the dear Lord’s name

mentioned since I arrived, so I didn’t scold her. But Patience,

dear, I hope you’ll never use slang. I’ve talked to Hal about

you, and she says she’s coming to see you.

Honora doesn’t use slang. She is very stately and dignified, and

Cousin Honora (it’s very awkward when you’re writing for two

people to have the same name, isn’t it?) holds her up as a model

for the girls. Hal and she _fight_. I can’t call it anything

else, although Honora doesn’t lose her temper and Hal does. Hal

said to me (of Honora) yesterday (I use her own words, although

they’re awful; but if I didn’t I couldn’t give you the same idea

of her): “She’s a d—— hypocrite: and she wants to marry

Beverly, but she won’t,—not if I have to turn matchmaker and

marry him to a variety actress. She makes me wild. I wish she’d

elope with the priest, but she’s too confoundedly clever.” Isn’t

it dreadful—Honora is a Catholic. She became converted last

year. Perhaps that’s the reason I can’t like her. But even the

Catholic religion teaches charity, for she said to me this

morning: “Poor Hal is really a good-hearted child, but she’s

worldly and just a little superficial.”

They haven’t any company this week—how kind of Cousin Honora to

ask me when they are alone! I wish you were here to enjoy the

library. It is a great big room overlooking the river, and the

walls are covered with books—three or four generations of them.

Mr. Peele is intellectual, and so is Honora; but the others

don’t read much, except Hal, who reads dreadful-looking yellow

paper books written in the French language which she says are

“corkers,” whatever that may mean. I do wish the dear child

would read her Bible. I asked her if I gave her a copy if she’d

promise me to read a little every day, and she said she would,

as some of the stories were as good as a French novel. So I

shall buy her one.

We sit in the library every evening. In the morning we sit in

the Tea House on the slope and Honora embroiders Catholic Church

things, Cousin Honora knits (she says it’s all the fashion), May

_talks_, and Hal reads her yellow books and tells May to “let

up.” I sew for my poor, and they don’t seem to mind that as much

as the white ribbon. They say that they always sew for the poor

in Lent. Hal says it is the “swagger thing.” In the afternoon we

drive, and I do think it such a waste of time to be going, going

nowhere for two hours.

Well, Patience, I shall be with you on Wednesday, praise the

Lord. Come to the train and meet me, and be sure to write me

about _everything_. How is Polly Jones, and old Mrs. Murphy, and

Belinda Greggs? Have you read to Maria Twist, and taken the

broth to old Jonas Hobb? Give my love to dear sister Beale, and

tell her I pray for her. With a kiss from your old auntie, God

bless you,

HARRIET TREMONT.

“Dear old soul,” thought Patience. “I think I know them better than she

does, already. She is worth the whole selfish crowd; but I should like

to know Hal. Beverly must be a chump.”

VIII

The other letter was from Rosita. Patience had not heard from her for a

long while. Three months previously, Mr. Foord had written of Mrs.

Thrailkill’s death, and mentioned that Rosita had gone to Sacramento to

visit Miss Galpin—now Mrs. Trent—until her uncle, who had returned to

Kentucky, should send for her.

Oh, Patita! Patita! [the letter began], what do you think? _I am

on the stage._ I had been crazy to go on ever since _that

night_. A theatrical man was in Monterey just before mamma’s

death, and he told me they were always wanting pretty corus

girls at the Tivoli; so after the funeral I told everybody I was

going to stay with Miss Galpin until Uncle Jim sent for me—I

hated to lie, but I had to—and I went up to San Francisco and

went right to the Tivoli. He took me because he said I was

pretty and had a fresh voice. I had to ware tights. You should

have seen me. At first I felt all the time like stooping over to

cover up my legs with my arms. But after a while I got used to

it, and one night we had to dance, and everybody said I was the

most graceful. The manager said I was a born dancer and actress.

The other day what do you think happened? A New York manager was

here and heard me sing,—I had a little part by that time,—and

he told me that if I took lessons I could be a prima donna in

comic opera. He said I not only was going to have a lovely

voice, but that I had a new style (Spanish) and would take in

New York. He offered to send me to Paris for a year and then

bring me out in New York if I’d give him my word—I’m too young

to sign a contract—that I wouldn’t go with any other manager.

At first my manager, who is a good old sole (I didn’t tell you

that I live with him and his wife, and that their awful good to

me and stand the fellers off), wouldn’t have it; but after a

while he gave in—said I’d have to go the pace sooner or later

(whatever that means), and I might as well go it in first class

style. His wife, the good old sole, cried. She said I was the

first corus girl she’d ever taken an interest in, but somehow it

would be on her conscience if I went wrong. But I’m not going

wrong. I don’t care a bit for men. There was a bald-headed old

fool who used to come and sit in the front row every night and

throw kisses to me, and one night he threw me a bouquet with a

bracelet in it. I wore the bracelet, for it was a beauty with a

big diamond in it; but I never looked at him or answered any of

his notes, and Mr. Bell—the manager—wrote him he’d punch his

head if he came near the stage door. No, all I want is to act,

act, act, and sing, sing, sing, and dance, dance, dance, and

have beautiful cloths and jewels and a carriage and two horses.

Mr. Soper has told me ten times since I’ve met him that “virtue

in an actress pays,” and he’s going to send a horrid old woman

with me to Paris, as if I’d bother with the fools anyhow. I’m

sure I can’t see what Mrs. Bell cries about if I’m going to be

famous and make a lot of money. Anyhow, I’m going. I do so want

to see you, Patita dear. Maybe you can come up to the steamer

and see me off. I wonder if you have changed. I’m not so very

tall; but they all say my figure is good. Mr. Soper says it will

be divine in a year or two, but that I may be a cow at thirty,

so I’d better not lose any time. Good-bye. Good-bye. I want to

give you a hundred kisses. How different our lives are! Isn’t

yours dreadfully stupid with that old temprance work? And just

think it was you who taught me to act first! Mr. Soper says I

must cultivate the Spanish racket for all it’s worth, and that

he expects me to be more Spanish in New York than I was in

Monterey. He is going to get an opera written for me with the

part of a Spanish girl in it so I can wear the costume. He says

if I study and do everything he tells me I’ll make a _furore_.

_Hasta luego_—Patita _mia_.

ROSITA ELVIRA FRANCESCA THRAILKILL.

P. S.—I’m to have a Spanish stage name, “La Rosita,” I guess.

Mr. Soper says that Thrailkill is an “anti-climax,” and would

never “go down.”

IX

Patience read this letter with some alarm. All that she had heard and

read of the stage made her apprehensive. She feared that Rosita would

become fast, would drink and smoke, and not maintain a proper reserve

with men. Then the natural independence of her character asserted

itself, and she felt pride in Rosita’s courage and promptness of action.

She even envied her a little: her life would be so full of variety.

“And after all it’s fate,” she thought philosophically. “She was cut out

for the stage if ever a girl was. You might as well try to keep a bird

from using its wings, or Miss Beale and auntie from being Temperance. I

wonder what my fate is. It’s not the stage, but it’s not this,

neither—not much. Shouldn’t wonder if I made a break for Mr. Field some

day. But I couldn’t leave auntie. She’s the kind that gets a hold on

you.”

She did her duty by Hog Heights during Miss Tremont’s brief holiday, but

did it as concisely as was practicable. She found it impossible to

sympathise with people that were content to let others support them,

giving nothing in return. Her strong independent nature despised

voluntary weakness. It was her private opinion that these useless

creatures with only the animal instinct to live, and not an ounce of

grey matter in their skulls, encumbered the earth, and should be quietly

chloroformed.

Despite her love for Miss Tremont, she breathed more freely in her

absence. She was surfeited with religion, and at times possessed with a

very flood of revolt and the desire to let it loose upon every church

worker in Mariaville. But affection and gratitude restrained her.

X

Miss Tremont returned on Wednesday morning. She stepped off the train

with a bag under one arm, a bundle under the other, and both arms full

of flowers.

“Oh, you darling, you darling!” she cried as she fell upon Patience.

“How it does my heart good to see you! These are for you. Hal picked

them, and sent her love. Aren’t they sweet?”

“Lovely,” said Patience, crushing the flowers as she hugged and kissed

Miss Tremont. “Here, give me the bag.”

Miss Tremont would go to Temperance Hall first, then to call upon Miss

Beale, but was finally guided to her home. The trunk had preceded them.

Patience unpacked the despised gowns, while listening to a passionate

dissertation upon the heavy trial they had been to their owner.

“I think you had a good time all the same,” she said. “You look as if

you’d had, at any rate. You’ve not looked so well since I came. That

sort of thing agrees with you better than tramping over Hog Heights—”

“It does not!” cried Miss Tremont. “And I am so glad to get back to my

work and my little girl.”

“And the Lord,” supplemented Patience.

“Oh, He was with me even there. Only He didn’t feel so near.” She sighed

reminiscently. “But I’ve brought pictures of the children to show you.

Let us go down to the parlour where it’s cooler, and then we’ll stand

them in a row on the mantel. They’re the first pictures I’ve had of them

in years.” She caught a package from the tray of her trunk, in her usual

abrupt fashion, and hurried downstairs, Patience at her heels.

Miss Tremont seated herself in her favourite upright chair, put on her

spectacles, and opened the package. “This is Hal,” she said, handing one

of the photographs to Patience. “I must show you her first, for she’s my

pet.”

Patience examined the photograph eagerly. It was a half length of a girl

with a straight tilted nose, a small mouth with a downward droop at the

corners, large rather prominent eyes, and sleek hair which was in

keeping with her generally well-groomed appearance. She wore a tailor

frock. Her slender erect figure was beautifully poised. In one hand she

carried a lorgnette. She was not pretty, but her expression was frank

and graceful, and she had much distinction.

“I like her. Any one could see she was a swell. What colour hair has

she?”

“Oh, a kind of brown. Her eyes are a sort of grey. Here is May. She

always has her photographs coloured.”

“Oh, she’s a beauty!” The girl even in photograph showed an exquisite

bit of flesh and blood. The large blue eyes were young and appealing

under soft fall of lash. The mouth was small and red, the nose small and

straight. Chestnut hair curled about the small head and oval face. The

skin was like tinted jade. It was the face of the American aftermath.

She wore a ball gown revealing a slender girlish neck and a throat of

tender curves.

“She is a real beauty,” said Miss Tremont. “Poor Hal says, ‘she can’t

wear her neck because she hasn’t got any.’ Did you ever hear such an

expression?”

“Hal looks as if she had a good figure.”

Miss Tremont shook her head. “I don’t approve of all Hal does—she pads.

She doesn’t seem to care much who knows it, for when the weather’s very

warm she takes them out, right before your eyes, so it isn’t so bad as

if she were deceitful about it. Here is Beverly.”

Patience looked long at the young man’s face. This face too was oval,

with a high intellectual forehead, broad black brows, and very regular

features. The mouth appeared to pout beneath the drooping moustache. The

expression of the eyes was very sweet. It was a strong handsome face,

high-bred like the others, but with a certain nobility lacking in the

women.

“He is said to be the handsomest young man in Westchester County, and

he’s quite dark,” said Miss Tremont. “What do you think of him?”

“He is rather handsome. Where is Honora?”

“She never has pictures taken. But, dear me, I must go out and see

Ellen.”

Patience disposed the photographs on the mantel, then, leaning on her

elbows, gazed upon Beverly Peele. The Composite, Byron, the Stranger,

rattled their bones unheard. She concluded that no knight of olden time

could ever have been so wholly satisfactory as this young man. Romance,

who had been boxed about the ears, and sent to sleep, crept to her old

throne with a sly and meaning smile. Patience began at once to imagine

her meeting with Beverly Peele. She would be in a runaway carriage, and

he would rescue her. She would be skating and fall in a hole, and he

would pull her out. He would be riding to hounds in his beautiful pink

coat (which was red) and run over her.

She pictured his face with a variety of expressions. She was sure that

he had the courage of a lion and the tenderness of some women.

Unquestionably he had read his ancestors’ entire library—“with that

forehead,”—and he probably had the high and mighty air of her favourite

heroes of fiction. In one of her letters Miss Tremont had remarked that

he loved children and animals; therefore he had a beautiful character

and a kind heart. And she was glad to have heard that he also had a

temper: it saved him from being a prig. Altogether, Patience, with the

wisdom of sixteen and three quarters, was quite convinced that she had

found her ideal, and overlooked its extreme unlikeness to the Composite,

which was the only ideal she had ever created. A woman’s ideal is the

man she is in love with for the time being.

She went up to her room, and for the first time in her life critically

examined herself in the mirror. With May Peele and one or two beauties

of the High School in mind, she decided with a sigh that _she_ was no

beauty.

“But who knows,” she thought with true insight, “what I’d be with

clothes? Who could be pretty in a calico dress? My nose is as straight

as May’s, anyhow, and my upper lip as short. But to be a real beauty

you’ve got to have blue eyes and golden or chestnut hair and a little

mouth, or else black eyes and hair like Rosita’s. My eyes are only grey,

and my hair’s the colour of ashes, as Rosita once remarked. There’s no

getting over that, although it certainly has grown a lot since I came

here.”

Then she remembered that Rosita had once decorated her with red ribbons

and assured her that they were becoming. She ran down to the best spare

room, and, divesting a tidy of its scarlet bows, pinned them upon

herself before the mirror, which she discovered was more becoming than

her own. The brilliant colour was undoubtedly improving—“And, my

goodness!” she exclaimed suddenly, “I do believe I haven’t got a freckle

left. It must be the climate.”

“What on earth are you doing?” said an abrupt voice from the doorway.

Patience started guiltily, and restored the bows to the tidy.

“Oh, you see,” she stammered, “May is so pretty I wanted to see if I

could be a little less homely.” Patience was truthful by nature, but the

woman does not live that will not lie under purely feminine provocation.

Otherwise she would not be worthy to bear the hallowed name of woman.

“Nonsense,” said Miss Tremont, crossly, “I thought you were above that

kind of foolishness. You, must remember that you are as the Lord made

you, and be thankful that you were not born a negro or a Chinaman.”

“Oh, I am,” said Patience.

XI

Thereafter, Patience roamed the woods munching chestnuts and dreaming of

Beverly Peele. Hugo and Balzac and Goethe were neglected. Her brain wove

thrilling romances of its own, especially in the night to the sound of

rain. She never emerged from the woods without a shortening of the

breath; but even Hal did not pay the promised call; nor did Beverly dash

through the streets in a pink coat, a charger clasped between his knees.

“Well, it’s fun to be in love, anyhow,” she thought. “I’ll meet him some

time, I know.”

Much to her regret she was not permitted to go to New York to see Rosita

off. Miss Tremont had a morbid horror of the stage, and after Patience’s

exhibition of vanity was convinced that “actress creatures” would exert

a pernicious influence.

And, shortly after, Patience received news which made her forget Rosita

and even Beverly Peele for a while. Mr. Foord was dead. Patience had

hoarded his twenty dollar gold piece because he had given it to her. She

bought a black hat and frock with it, and felt as sad as she could at

that age of shifting impressions. A later mail brought word that he had

left her John Sparhawk’s library, which could stay in the Custom House

until she was able to send for it, and a few hundred dollars which would

remain in a savings bank until she was eighteen. He had nothing else to

leave except his books, which went to found a town library. All but

those few hundreds had been sunken in an annuity. Miss Tremont was quite

content to be overlooked in the girl’s favour.

By the time Patience was ready to return to Beverly Peele the new term

opened, and the uncompromising methods of the High School left no time

for romance. Once more her ambition to excel became paramount, and she

studied night and day. She had no temptation to dissipate, for she was

not popular with the young people of Mariaville. The Y’s disapproved of

her because she would not don the white ribbon; and the church girls,

generally, felt that except when perfunctorily assisting Miss Tremont

she held herself aloof, even at the frequent sociables. And they were

scandalised because she did not join the church, nor the King’s

Daughters, nor the Christian Endeavor.

The High School scholars liked her because she was “square,” and

cordially admired her cleverness; but there were no recesses in the

ordinary sense, and after school Miss Tremont claimed her. Even the boys

“had no show,” as they phrased it. Occasionally they lent her a hand on

the ice; but like all Californians, she bitterly felt the cold of her

second winter, and in her few leisure hours preferred the fire.

Sometimes she looked at Beverly Peele’s picture with a sigh and some

resentment. “But never mind,” she would think philosophically, “I can

fall in love with him over again next summer.” When vacation came she

did in a measure take up the broken threads of her romance, but they had

somewhat rotted from disuse.

Rosita wrote every few weeks, reporting hard work and unbounded hope.

“The _dueña_,” as she called her companion, “was an old devil,” and

never let her go out alone, nor receive a man; but she “didn’t care,”

she had no time for nonsense, anyhow. She was learning her part in the

Spanish opera, which had been written for her, and it was “lovely.”

“It must be a delightful sensation to have your future assured at

seventeen,” thought Patience. “Mine is as problematical as the outcome

of the Temperance cause. I have had one unexpected change, and may have

more. If it were not for Rosita’s letters I should almost forget those

sixteen years in California. I certainly am not the same person. I

haven’t lost my temper for a year and a half, and I don’t seem to be

disturbed any more by vague yearnings. Life is too practical, I

suppose.”

Miss Tremont did not visit the Gardiner Peeles this summer: they spent

the season in travel. Late in the fall Rosita returned to America. She

wrote the day before she sailed. That was the last letter Patience

received from her. Later she sent a large envelope full of clippings

descriptive of her triumphal début; thereafter nothing whatever.

Patience, supposing herself forgotten, anathematised her old friend

wrathfully, but pride forbade her to write and demand an explanation.