BOOK IV

I

Miss Merrien lived in West Forty-fourth Street, near Broadway. Ten days

after her visit to Peele Manor Patience rang the door-bell of the house

that was to be her new home, one of a long impersonal row.

The maid that answered her ring handed her a note from Miss Merrien, and

conducted her up to a hall room on the third floor. Patience closed the

door, and looked about her with the sensation of the shipwrecked. For a

moment she was strongly tempted to flee back to Peele Manor. The room

was about eight feet square, and furnished with a folding-bed, which was

likewise a bureau, and with a washstand, a table, and two chairs. The

furniture and carpet were new, and there were pretty blue and white

curtains on the window. Nevertheless the tiny room with its modern

contrivances was the symbol of poverty and struggle and an entirely new

existence. Her second impulse was to sit down on a chair and cry; but

she set her teeth, and read Miss Merrien’s note instead.

I am so sorry not to be able to meet you [it read]; but I am a

slave, you know. Before I was out of bed this morning I received

an assignment to go to a woman’s club meeting at eleven. But

I’ll get back in time to go down to the shop with you. Don’t get

blue—if you can help it. Remember that every woman feels the

same way when she first makes the break for self-support; and

that your chances are better than those of most. There’s a

little restaurant round the corner—the maid will show

you—where you can get your luncheon. _Au revoir._ I’m so glad

the sun is out.

ANNA CHETWYNDE MERRIEN.

P. S. Your clothes are in the closet in the hall. The key is in

the washstand drawer.

Patience felt in better cheer after reading Miss Merrien’s kindly

greeting, but the day dragged along very heavily. She went out and

bought all the newspapers, and studied them attentively for hints; but

they did not tell her inexperience anything, and after a time she let

them fall to the floor and sat staring at the blank windows opposite.

For the first time doubts assailed her. She had been so full of young

confidence, and pride in her brains and health and courage, that she had

not regarded the issue of her struggle with the world in the light of a

problem; but face to face with the practical details, she felt short of

breath and weak in the knees.

At two o’clock Miss Merrien came in, looking very tired. There were

black scoops under her eyes, and the lines about her mouth were strongly

accentuated. But she smiled brightly as Patience rose to greet her.

“Well, you are here,” she said. “I changed my mind fifty times about

your coming, but on the whole I thought you would. Fortunately I have

nothing on hand for this afternoon. I’ll rest, and then go down with you

to the shop. Oh, I am so tired, my dear. Can I lie down on your bed

awhile?”

“I shall be delighted to learn how to open it,” said Patience, who was

wondering if her fair face was to become scooped and lined.

Miss Merrien deftly manipulated the bed, loosened her frock, and flung

herself full length.

“I spent all day yesterday and half the night tramping over Brooklyn

hunting up facts in the case of that girl who was found dead in a

tenement-house bed in a grand ball gown. A great story that, but it has

done me up. Tell me—how do you feel?”

“Oh, I’m glad I’m here, but I wish it was six months from now.”

“Of course you do. That’s the way we all feel. But you’ll soon swing

into place, and be too busy to think. I do wish you could get work in

the office, so that you could keep regular hours and meals, and not lose

your good looks; but there’s no berth of that sort. I tell you it is a

sad day when a girl under twenty-five sees the lines coming. The

Revolting Sisterhood say that the next century is to be ours; but I

doubt it. Men lighten our burdens a little now, but I’m afraid they’ll

hate us if we worry and supplant them any further. Well, I’m going to

take a nap. Wake me promptly at 3.10.”

She closed her eyes and fell asleep immediately. The lines grew fainter

as she slept, and the hair fell softly about her face. Patience

reflected gratefully that three months of absolute leisure and peace of

mind would give back to the girl all her freshness and rounded contours.

At ten minutes past three she awakened her. Miss Merrien sat up with a

sigh.

“I feel better, though. Cultivate those cat-naps. They refresh you

wonderfully. Now, we’ll go.”

II

They went down town on the Elevated, leaving it at Park Row. Patience

was so much interested in the great irregular mass of buildings

surrounding City Hall Square, at the dense throngs packing the crooked

side streets, at the fakirs with their nonsensical wares, at the

bewildering array of gilt newspaper names on the rows and stories of

polished windows, that she forgot her errand for the moment, and was

nearly run over.

“Yes, this is the heart of New York, sure enough,” assented Miss

Merrien. “All those big buildings over there are on the famous Newspaper

Row. Brooklyn Bridge is just behind. This is the Post Office on the

right, and that flat building in the square is the City Hall. I tell you

when you get down here, the rest of New York, including all the smart

folk, seems pretty insignificant.”

“Oh,” exclaimed Patience, with a sudden sinking of the heart, “there is

the ‘Day’ building.”

“That is our shop. Now, brace up.”

Patience needed the admonition. She forgot City Hall Park. All her

doubts returned, with others in their wake. She knew something of the

snobbery of the world. As Mrs. Beverly Peele she had been an object of

respectful interest to Mr. Field. What would she be as an applicant for

work? True, he had been kind to her when she was a small nobody, but

that might have been merely a caprice.

They climbed up two narrow stairs in an ugly old building, and entered a

large gas-lit room full of desks. Many young men were writing or moving

about; several were in their shirt sleeves.

“This is the City room,” said Miss Merrien, “and these are the

reporters. Those men in that little room there are the editors and

editorial writers. Mr. Field’s room is just beyond. Now send your card

in by this boy. The Chief’s harder to see than the President of the

United States, but I guess he’ll see you.”

Patience gave the boy her card, and at the end of half an hour, during

which she was much stared at by some of the men and totally ignored by

others, the boy returned and conducted her to Mr. Field’s office.

It was a typical editor’s den of the old-fashioned type. A big desk

covered with papers, a revolving chair, and one other chair completed

the furniture. A large cat was walking about, switching its tail. The

floor was bare. The light straggled down between the tall buildings

surrounding, and entered through small windows. It was Mr. Field’s pride

to have the greatest newspaper and the most unpretentious “shop” in the

United States.

He rose as Patience entered, his eyes twinkling.

“Well,” he said, as he handed her the extra chair, “there’s a mighty row

on, isn’t there? Peele has been here, and now we do not speak as we pass

by. But we hadn’t had a good woman sensation for a month. I tried to

explain that to Peele, but it didn’t seem to impress him. I suppose

you’ve come to beg for mercy.”

“No—I haven’t come for that.”

“Why, what is the matter? I never saw you look the least bit rattled

before. You are always the young queen with a court of us old fellows at

your feet. But tell me; you know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

Patience drew a long breath of relief.

“Oh, you make it easier—I’ve been horribly frightened. But I’ll get to

the point—I suppose you’re very busy down here. Can I have ten

minutes?”

He laughed. “We are usually what you might call busy in this office, but

you may have twenty minutes. Take your time.”

“Well, it’s this: I’ve left Peele Manor for good and all, and I want to

be a newspaper woman.”

Mr. Field’s shaggy white brows rushed up his forehead. His black eyes

expanded.

“My God! What did you make such a break as that for?”

“There are many reasons. I can’t give them all. But all the same I’ve

left, and I’m not going back.”

“Well, your reasons must be good, for you had a delightful position, and

you became it. Are you sure you are not acting rashly?”

“I’ve thought and thought and thought about it. I can’t understand why I

didn’t leave before. I suppose my ideas and intentions didn’t

crystallise until I met Miss Merrien. She has been very kind. I sent my

clothes to her by degrees; she engaged a room for me in her house; we

are going to cook together; and I have given her what money I have to

take care of.”

“Well, well, you have acted deliberately. I don’t know that I am so much

surprised, after all, and I’ll say nothing to persuade you to go back. I

respect your courage and independence, and I’ll do all I can. I haven’t

the slightest idea what you can do, but we’ll find out.” He leaned

forward and patted her hand. Patience had one moment of painful

misgiving, but again she had misjudged him. “If you get discouraged,

just remember that the old man at the helm is your friend and won’t let

you go under.”

“I’m sure you’re awfully good,” said Patience, tears of contrition and

gratitude in her eyes. “I knew you would.”

Mr. Field touched a bell. A boy entered.

“If Mr. Steele is still in the office ask him to step here,” said the

chief.

“Steele is the editor of the Evening ‘Day,’” he explained, “and has a

remarkable faculty for discovering other people’s abilities.”

Patience expected to see a man of middle years and business-like

demeanour. She stared in amazement as a young man under thirty entered

and was presented. He was closely built, but held himself carelessly.

His smooth rather square face was very pale, and despite the

irregularity of feature, bore an odd resemblance to the Greek fauns. The

mouth was large and full, the eyes large, dark blue, and very cold. His

fashionable attire accentuated the antiquity of his face and head.

“Mr. Steele,” said Mr. Field, “this is Mrs. Beverly Peele, of whom you

have heard so much lately. She has made up her mind to support herself.

When she was a little girl I told her that I should one day make a

newspaper woman of her, and she has come to hold me to my word—much to

my satisfaction. I put her in your hands, and feel confident you will

make a success of her.”

Patience expected to see a look of blank surprise cross the young

editor’s face, but she did not know the modern newspaper youth. Mr.

Steele could not have displayed less emotion had the new-comer been a

young woman with letters from Posy County, Illinois. He merely bowed to

her, then to his chief. Patience rose at once.

“I won’t keep you,” she said to Mr. Field. “I’ll only thank you again,

and promise to work as hard as Miss Merrien.”

“I haven’t the slightest doubt of your success. Always remember that,”

said Mr. Field. Patience saw Mr. Steele’s eyebrow give a slight

involuntary jerk; but it was immediately controlled, and he bowed her

through the door.

“We had better go upstairs to the evening room,” he said. “There is no

one there at present.”

Patience followed him up a precipitous stairway into a walled-off

section of the composing-room.

“Sit down,” he said politely, but Patience for the first time in her

life felt terrified and humble. This young man, of whom she had never

heard before, had the air of a superior being, omnipotent in her

destiny. His manner conveyed that he was not one whit impressed by the

fact that she had stepped down from the Sacred Reservation, took not the

faintest interest in her as a pretty woman. She was merely a young

person particularly recommended by his chief, and as such it was his

duty to give her consideration.

He took a chair opposite her own, and she felt as if those classic

guileless eyes were exploring her innermost brain.

“What can you do?” he asked coldly.

“Oh, nothing,” she said desperately, “absolutely nothing. I suppose you

feel like remarking that the ‘Day’ is not a kindergarten.”

“Well, it certainly is not. Nevertheless, as Mr. Field thinks that you

have ability, and wishes you to write for his paper, I, of course, shall

do all I can to abet him. I shall begin by giving you a few words of

advice. Have you a good memory; or should you prefer to write them

down?”

He spoke very slowly, as if he had a deep respect for the value of

words.

“I have read a great deal,” said Patience, proudly, “and my memory is

very good indeed.”

There was a faint twitching of one corner of Mr. Steele’s mouth, but he

continued in the same business-like tone:—

“Read the ‘Day’ through carefully, morning and evening. Observe the

style in which facts are presented, and the general tone and atmosphere

of the paper. Cultivate that general style, not your own. Remember that

you are not on this newspaper to make an individual reputation, but to

become, if possible, a unit of a harmonious whole, and to give the

public the best news in the style to which this newspaper has accustomed

it. When you are sent on an assignment remember that you are to gather

facts—facts. Keep your eyes open, and cultivate the faculty of

observation for all it is worth. When you have gathered these facts put

them into as picturesque a shape as you choose—or as you can. But no

rhetoric, no rhapsodies, no flights, no theories. If the facts admit of

being treated humorously, treat them in that way, by all means,—that

is, if you can imitate a man’s humour, not a woman’s flippancy. A good

many women can. And never forget that it must not be your humour but the

inherent humour of the subject. Be concise. When you feel disposed to

say a thing in ten words say it in five. That is all I can think of at

present. Be here at eight o’clock to-morrow, and I will give you an

assignment.”

He rose, and Patience felt herself dismissed. She sat for a minute

looking at him with angry eyes. Not even in the early days of her

married life had she been so patronised as by this unknown young man.

She felt as if he had plucked her individuality out with his thumb and

finger and contemptuously tossed it aside.

“Is anything the matter?” he asked indifferently, although one corner of

his mouth twitched again.

“No!” Patience sprang to her feet and ran down the stair, at the

imminent risk of breaking her neck. Miss Merrien was waiting for her.

“Why, what on earth is the matter?” she exclaimed.

“Oh, let us get out into the air! Come, and then I’ll tell you.”

But they were not able to converse until seated in the Elevated Train.

Then Patience exclaimed with an accent of cutting sarcasm,—

“Who, _who_ is Mr. Steele?”

Miss Merrien smiled broadly. “Oh, I see. Did he patronise you? You must

get used to editors. Remember they are monarchs in a small way, and love

their power—the more because their dominion is confined within four

walls. But Morgan Steele is one of the kindest men in the office. I’d

rather work for him than for any one. He puts on an extra amount of side

on account of his youth, but the reporters all adore him. He won’t keep

an incompetent man two days, and during those two days the man’s life is

a burden; but he is always doing good turns to the boys he likes. When

you know him you’ll like him.”

“I think him an insolent young cub, and if I didn’t hate to bother Mr.

Field I’d refuses to write for him. What on earth is a youngster like

that in such a responsible position for?”

“Oh, my dear, this is the young man’s epoch. Just cast your eyes over

the United States and even England, and think of the men under thirty

that are editors and authors and special writers and famous artists and

leaders of enterprises. They are burnt out at forty, but they begin to

play a brilliant part in their early twenties. I heard a man say the

other day of another man who is only twenty-six and supposed to be

ambitious: ‘Well, he’d better hump himself. He’s no chicken.’ A man

feels a failure nowadays if he hasn’t distinguished himself before

thirty.”

“They are certainly distinguished for conceit.”

“Oh, when you get used to newspaper men you’ll like them better than any

men you’ve known. What is objectionable is counteracted by their brains

and their intimate and wonderfully varied knowledge of life. A newspaper

man who is at the same time a gentleman, is charming. It is true they

have no respect for anybody nor anything. They believe in no woman’s

virtue and no man’s honesty—under stress. Their kindness—like Morgan

Steele’s—is half cynical, and they look upon life as a thing to be

lived out in twenty years—and then dry rot or suicide. But no men know

so well how to enjoy life, know so thoroughly its resources, or have all

their senses so keenly developed, particularly the sense of humour,

which keeps them from making fools of themselves. No man can feel so

strongly for a day, and that after all is the philosophy of life. All

this makes them very interesting, although, I must confess, I should

hate to marry one. It seems to be a point of honour among them to be

unfaithful to their wives; however, I imagine, the real reason is that

no one woman has sufficient variety in her to satisfy a man who sees

life from so many points of view daily that he becomes a creature of

seven heads and seven hearts and seven ideals. Now, tell me all about

your interviews with Mr. Field and Morgan Steele.”

Patience told the tale, and Miss Merrien raised her eyebrows at its

conclusion. “Well, you need not lie awake nights trembling for the

future. You are in for push and no mistake. If the Chief has taken you

under his wing in that fashion you can be sure that Morgan Steele will

work you for all that is in you, whether he wants to or not.” Suddenly

she laughed, and leaning over looked quizzically at Patience. “You vain

girl,” she said, “you are piqued because Morgan Steele did not succumb

as other men—including Mr. Field—have done to your beauty and charm.

But I’ll tell you this, by way of consolation: it is a point of

etiquette—or prudence—among editors never to pay the most commonplace

attentions to, or manifest the slightest interest in the women of the

office. It would not only lead to endless complications, but would

impair the lordlings’ dignity: in other words, they would be guyed. So

cheer up. You haven’t gone off since this morning. I see three men

staring at you in true Elevated style.”

Patience laughed. “Well, I will admit that I have no respect whatever

for a man that is unappreciative of the charms of woman. I’d like to

give Mr. Steele a lesson, but I won’t. I wouldn’t condescend. I’ll be as

business-like as he is. He knew why I was angry to-day, I am afraid, but

he won’t see me angry again. Why is Mr. Field so much nicer?”

“Oh, he owns the paper.”

III

Patience’s indignation had worn itself out by bedtime. When Miss Merrien

left her for the night she locked her door and spread her arms out with

an exultant sense of freedom. She seemed to feel the ugly weight of the

past two years fall from her, and to hear it go clattering down the

quiet streets. Her sense of humour and the liveliness of her mind had

saved her from morbidity at any time, although she had not escaped

cynicism. She now felt that she could turn her back squarely on the

past, that she was not a woman whose mistakes and dark experiences would

corrode the brain and spirit, ruining present and future. She could not

make the same mistake again; and it was better to have made it in early

youth when the etchery of experience eats the copper of the ego more

lightly. The future seemed to her to be full of infinite possibilities.

She could be her own fastidious dreaming idealising self again. New

friends dotted the dusk like stars. She felt ten years away from the man

to whom she had nodded a careless good-bye that morning. A vague

pleasurable loneliness assailed her, the instinct of plurality. Then she

laughed suddenly and went to bed.

The next morning, at eight o’clock, after a cup of black coffee to

stiffen her nerves, she presented herself in the evening room of the

“Day.” Two men and a woman were writing at little tables. Mr. Steele in

his shirt sleeves was at his desk, reading copy. She sat down, priding

herself that her face was as impassive as his own. In a few moments he

called her to his desk.

“You have read in the newspapers, I suppose, of this crusade of Dr.

Broadhead, the fashionable Presbyterian clergyman, against the voting of

Immigrants?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“Well, he is doing his best to get the women of New York to help him,

and is holding his first meeting this morning in Cooper

Union—eleven-thirty. One of our best men will go to report the

addresses, but I want you to go and sit in the audience, and observe how

many fashionable women are there, what they wear, and what degree of

interest they appear to take in the proceedings. Above all, I want you

to keep your eyes and ears open for any significant fact which may or

may not appear. It usually does. That is all.—Well, what do you want?”

This to the office boy.

Patience went slowly downstairs, feeling as if she had been sent out to

discover the North Pole with a chart and a row-boat. When she reached

Cooper Union, two hours later, and found herself for the moment an

integer of one of the many phases of current history, she forgot the

agonising travail of the “news sense,” and became so deeply interested

that she observed the many familiar faces abstractedly, and, later,

“faked” their costumes.

She hurried to her room before the meeting was over and wrote her

“story.” It concluded thus:—

“Some four hundred women were present, at half-past eleven in

the morning; the hour indicating that they were women of

leisure, which in its turn presupposes the large measure of

education and refinement, and a general superiority over the

toiling millions. They were very enthusiastic. When Dr.

Broadhead entered the applause was deafening. They interrupted

him every few minutes. When he sat down, and Mr. Lionel Chambers

came forward he, too, was warmly welcomed, for his popularity is

well established. He smiled, and began something like this:—

“‘Ladies: Dr. Broadhead has left me little to say. I being

somewhat versed in politics, however, in other words, in hard

fighting with the enemy, he believes that I may be able to give

you a little useful advice.’ (Applause and cries of ‘Yes! Yes!’)

‘Now, ladies, there are several points upon which I must ask

your attention.’ (No man ever had more serious attention.) ‘I

will check them off in detail. First of all, ladies, my advice

to you is to—’ (every ear went forward)—‘is—to—pray.’

“He paused. There was an intense and disgusted silence, with the

exception of one or two muttered exclamations of impatience.

_There were just four hundred women in the city of New York who

were beyond that sort of thing._ He saw his mistake at once,

blundered on confusedly, recovered himself, and gave them much

sound, practical advice which they received with every mark of

gratitude.”

She hastened down to the office, her eyes shining with the proud delight

of authorship. Steele looked busier than any one she had ever seen, but

he asked sharply:

“Got anything?”

“Yes.”

“Let me see it. Skip the descriptive part.”

She handed him the latter part of her story, and he ran his eye hastily

over it. A gleam shot from his eyes, but he compressed his lips.

“That’s not bad—but I don’t know that I dare print it. The religious

hypocrisy of this country beats that of England, strange as it may

appear. However, I’ll think it over. Come down to-morrow morning.”

The article was printed, and the result was a shower of protesting

letters from clergymen and religious women. Patience was sent to

interview a number of representative women, of various spheres of life,

on the subject, and found herself fairly launched. She hardly had time

to realise whether she liked the work or not, but when she was not too

tired, concluded that she did. As this phase wore off, she developed

considerable enthusiasm, and felt her bump of curiosity enlarge.

She practically forgot the past, except to wonder occasionally that she

heard nothing from the Peeles. Upon her arrival in New York, on the

morning of her departure from Peele Manor, she had mailed a note to

Beverly, which merely announced that she had left him, never to return.

He was the sort of a man to put the matter in the hands of a detective,

but so far—and the weeks were growing into a month—he had given no

sign of any kind. She cared little for the cause of his silence,

however; she was too thankful for the fact. Occasionally Steele gave her

a brief word of praise, and she was more delighted than she had ever

been at the admiration of man.

IV

Patience sprang out of bed, full of the mere joy of living. She felt as

happy as a wild creature of the woods, and for no reason whatever. She

longed for Rosita’s voice that she might carol, and wondered if it were

possible that she had ever thought herself the most miserable of women.

The small room would not hold her, and she went out and took a long walk

in the sharp white air; it was Sunday, and she was not obliged to go to

the office.

When she returned, the servant told her that a gentleman awaited her in

the parlour. She turned cold, but went defiantly in. The visitor was Mr.

Field, and the revulsion of feeling was so great, and her exuberance of

spirits so undiminished, that she ran forward, threw her arms about his

neck, and kissed him.

“I am so happy I must kiss some one,” she said, “and after all you are

the right person, for it is owing to you that I am happy.”

“Well! well!” he said laughing, “I am delighted; and also relieved that

you did not take it into your head to do that down at the office. I’ve

just dropped in to ask after your health and to say good-bye. How do you

stand it?”

“Oh, I am well. I never felt so well. I get tired, but I sleep it off. I

made twenty-five dollars last week, and I celebrated the occasion by

coming home in a cab. Oh, I can tell you I feel all made over, and Peele

Manor seems prehistoric.”

“You always did live at a galloping rate mentally. You are doing first

rate—not but what you’ll do better a year from now. There’s pulse in

your stuff. Keep your enthusiasm as long as you can. Nothing takes its

place. Here’s something for you.”

A messenger boy had entered with a note.

“For me?”

“For Mrs. Beverly Peele.”

“Oh, dear!” she exclaimed, “it has come. This is from Mr. Peele. Do let

me read it—I can’t wait.”

She tore the envelope open and read hastily:—

DEAR PATIENCE,—On the night of the day of your departure from

Peele Manor, my son came up to us in a distracted condition. He

had also contracted the grippe. The combination of disorders

produced delirium and serious illness. For that reason and

others we have not endeavoured to communicate with you. In fact,

I only ascertained yesterday that you were working for Mr.

Field, who I consider has further betrayed my friendship in

associating himself with you in your insubordination.

Of course you are at liberty to act as you choose. The laws of

this country are wretchedly inadequate regarding the authority

of the husband. But one thing I insist upon: that you call upon

us and make a definite statement of what you purpose to do. If

you have repented and wish to return to us, we will overlook

this wretched mistake. If you intend definitely to leave your

husband and to follow the disgraceful life of a reporter on a

sensational newspaper, you owe it to us to come here in person

and define your position. The family with which you have allied

yourself, my dear young woman, is not one to be dismissed with a

note of three lines.

I particularly request that you call at three o’clock this

afternoon.

Yours truly

GARDINER PEELE.

Patience handed the note to Mr. Field, who read it with much interest.

“Go by all means,” he said; “otherwise they will annoy you with petty

persecutions, and Beverly will haunt the ‘Day.’ Keep up all your pluck,

and remember that this is a free country, and that they can compel you

to do nothing you do not wish to do. You are mistress of the situation,

and can call upon me for proof that you are supporting yourself

adequately.”

“Oh, I don’t want to go. I never want to look at one of them again. I’d

just managed to forget them all.”

“But you must go. It would look cowardly if you didn’t; and, when you

come to think of it, you certainly do owe them some sort of explanation.

Poor Peele! he must have actually suffered at being treated in such

cavalier fashion.”

“Oh, well, I’ll go! I’ll go! But I wish I’d never seen them.”

“You don’t look at all pretty with that face, and I shall run. By the

way, I came to tell you that I start for Paris to-morrow to join my

wife, who has been on the other side for some months. Otherwise she

would have called before this. Steele will take care of you.”

V

When Patience went up to her room she slammed the door, closed the

window violently, then sat down and beat a tattoo on the floor with her

heels. Her spirits were still high, but cyclonic. She would willingly

have smashed things, and felt no disposition to sing.

Nevertheless she rang the bell of the house in Eleventh Street at three

o’clock. The butler bowed solemnly, and announced that the family

awaited her in the library. Patience, piqued that they were assured of

her coming, was half inclined to turn back, then shrugged her shoulders,

walked down the hall, and through the dining-room to the library in the

annex.

The afternoon sun irradiated the cheerful room, but Beverly, with sunken

eyes and pallid face, sat huddled by the fire. He sprang to his feet as

Patience entered, then turned away with a scowl and sank back in his

chair. His mother sat opposite. She merely bent her head to Patience,

then turned her solicitous eyes to her son’s face. Honora came forward

and kissed her sweetly. Mr. Peele did not shake hands with her, but

offered her a chair by the long table. Patience took it, and experienced

a desire to laugh immoderately. They had the air of a Court of Inquiry,

and appeared to regard her as a delinquent at the bar.

Mr. Peele sat in his revolving chair, tipped a little back. He had

crossed his legs and leaned his elbows on the arms of the chair,

pressing his finger tips lightly together.

“Now,” he said coldly, “we are ready to hear you.”

“I have nothing in particular to say. I gave you fair warning, and you

refused to listen, or to let me go abroad and so avoid publicity. I

therefore took the matter in my own hands and went.”

“You ignore your duty to your husband; your marriage vows?”

“There is only one law for a woman to acknowledge, and that is her self

respect.”

“The husband that loves you is entitled to no consideration?”

“Not when he exercises none himself. I refuse to admit that any human

being has the right to control me unless I voluntarily submit myself to

that control.”

“Are you aware that you are uttering the principles of anarchy?”

“Well, the true anarchists of this world are not the bomb throwers. When

a man and woman are properly married there is no question of authority

or disobedience; but a woman is a common harlot who lives with a man

that makes her curse the whole scheme of creation.”

Honora lifted a screen and hid her face. Beverly muttered inaudible

remarks. Mrs. Peele lifted her eyebrows and curled her mouth. Mr. Peele

moved his head slowly back and forth.

“I shall not attempt to contradict any of your remarkable theories,” he

said. “It is apparent that you are imbued with all the pernicious

thought of the time. I am thankful that it is not my destiny to live

among the next generation of women. Will you kindly tell me how you

should have acted in this matter if you had had children?”

“Oh, I don’t know! I have thought of that. No woman should have a child

until she has been married three years. By that time she would know

whether or not she had made a mistake.”

“And what shall you do if you are unable to support yourself?”

“Starve. No one has a right to live that the world has no use for, that

can give the world nothing. Man’s chief end is not bread and butter. If

I can give the world anything it will be glad to give me a living in

return. If I am a failure I’ll walk out of existence as quietly as I

altered my life. But I haven’t the slightest doubt of my ability to take

care of myself.”

Mr. Peele pressed his lips together. The old man and the young woman

regarded each other steadily, the one with malevolence in his eye, the

other with defiance in hers. In that moment Mr. Peele hated her, and she

knew it. She had made him feel old and a component part of the decaying

order of things, while she represented the insolent confidence of youth

in the future.

“Women make too much fuss,” continued Patience. “If they don’t like

their life why don’t they alter it quietly, without taking it to the

lecture platform or the polemical novel? If they don’t like the way man

governs why don’t they educate their sons differently? They can do

anything with the plastic mind. I am sure it could be proved that most

corrupt politicians and bad husbands had weak or careless mothers. If

the men of a country are bad you can be sure the women are worse—”

Beverly sprang to his feet, overturning his chair. “Damn it!” he cried.

“You can talk all you like, but you are mine and I’ll have you.”

Patience turned and fixed her angry eyes on his face. “Oh, no, you will

not. Your father will tell you that I am quite free.”

Mr. Peele gave a short dry laugh. “She has the best of it,” he said.

“You cannot compel her to return to you, and she has the air of one who

has tasted of the independence of making money—”

“Then I’ll dog her steps. I’ll make life hell for her—”

“You will do nothing of the sort, sir. Much as I disapprove of this

young woman’s course, she has in me an unwilling abettor. I shall not

have my domestic affairs made food for the newspapers and their hordes

of vulgar readers. Field would take up her cause and hound me to my

grave. You will keep quiet, and in the course of time get a divorce of

which no one will be the wiser until you marry again. If the gossip does

not get into the papers it will not rise above a murmur. If you add to

my annoyance I shall turn you out of Peele Manor and cut you off without

a cent. You will not pretend that you can support yourself.”

Patience rose. “If you have nothing more to ask I shall go,” she said.

“Beverly can bring his suit as soon as he chooses. It will go by

default.”

Beverly flung off his mother’s restraining arm and rushed forward. “You

shall not go!” he cried.

“Don’t touch me!” cried Patience; but before she could reach the door

Beverly had caught her in his arms. Excitement gave him strength. He

held her with hard muscles and kissed her many times.

The ugly temper she had kept under control broke loose. She lifted her

hand and struck him violently on the mouth. Her face too was convulsed,

but with another passion. She felt as if the past month had been

annihilated.

“Will you let me go?” she gasped. “Oh, how I hate you!” Then as he

kissed her again, “I could kill you! I could kill you!” She flung

herself free, and shaking with passion faced the scandalised family.

“You had better keep him out of the way,” she said. “Do you know that

once I nearly killed my own mother?”

VI

Patience slept little that night. Her head ached violently. When she

presented herself at the office Steele sent her to report a morning

lecture. It was dull, and she fell asleep. When she returned to the

office Steele happened to be alone.

“I have no report,” she said. “I fell asleep. That is all I have to

say.”

For a few seconds he stared at her, then turned on his heel. In a moment

he came back. “The next time you do that,” he said, “hunt up the

reporter of some other newspaper and get points from him. First-class

reporters always stand in together. Here’s a good story badly written

that has come up from Honduras. Take it home and revamp it, and let me

have it to-morrow.”

“You are awfully good. I thought you would tell me to go, and I

certainly deserve to.”

“You certainly do, but we won’t discuss the matter further.”

That was an unhappy week for Patience, and she lost faith in her star. A

great foreign actress, whom she was sent to interview, haughtily refused

to be seen, and the next morning capriciously sent for a reporter of the

“Eye,” the hated rival of the “Day.” She was put on the trail of a

fashionable scandal and failed to gather any facts. She was sent to

interview a strange old woman, supposed to have a history, who lived on

a canal boat, and became so interested in the creature that she forgot

all about the “Day,” and did not appear at Mr. Steele’s desk for three

days. When she did he looked sternly at her guilty face, although the

corners of his mouth twitched.

“I’m delighted to see you have not forsaken us,” he said sarcastically.

“May I ask if the canal boat woman quite slipped your memory?”

“N-o-o. I have been there ever since.”

“Indeed?” His ears visibly twitched. “That alters the case. Did you get

the story out of her?”

Patience looked at him steadily for a moment, then dropped her eyes.

“There is nothing to tell,” she answered.

Steele sprang to his feet.

“Come out here,” he said. He led her into a corner of the

composing-room, and they sat down on a bench.

“Now tell me,” he said peremptorily. “What have you heard? You have news

in your eye. I see it.”

“I have nothing to tell.”

“Suppose you tell the truth. You have the story, and you won’t give it

up. Why not?”

“Well—you see—she confided in me—she said I was the only woman who

had given her a decent word in twenty years; and if I told the story she

would be in jail to-morrow night. Do you think I’d be so low as to tell

it?”

“Sentimentality, my dear young woman, is fatal to a newspaper reporter.

Suppose the entire staff should go silly; where would the ‘Day’ be?”

“It might possibly be a good deal more admirable than it is now.”

“We won’t go into a discussion of theory _v._ practice. I want that

story.”

“You won’t get it.”

“Indeed.” He looked at her with cold angry eyes. “The trouble is that

you have not been made to feel what the discipline of a newspaper office

is—”

Patience leaned forward and smiled up audaciously into his face. “You

would do exactly the same thing yourself,” she said; “so don’t scold any

more. I admit that you frighten me half to death, but all the same I

know that you would never send a poor old woman to prison—not to be

made editor-in-chief.”

He reddened, and looked anything but pleased at the compliment. “Do you

know that you have just said that I am a jay newspaper man?” he asked.

But Patience only continued to smile, and in a moment he smiled back at

her, then, with an impatient exclamation, left her and returned to his

desk.

VII

Two months later Steele asked her to come to the office at six o’clock,

an hour at which the evening room was empty, and suggested that she

should give up reporting, and start a column of paragraphs.

“I should like it better, of course,” said Patience, after he had fully

explained the requirements of the new department. “I was going to tell

you that I _would not_ go to that Morgue again.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t? Well, you stood it rather longer than I thought you

would.”

“And I’m tired of interviewing insolent conceited people. Oh, by the

way, I should thank you for all these nice things you’ve just said to

me.”

He dropped his business-like manner suddenly. “How do you stand it?” he

asked. Then in reply to her look of surprise: “Oh, you know, the Chief,

when he went away, told me to look out for you.”

Patience immediately became the charming woman accustomed to the homage

of man. Steele’s pre-eminence was gone from that moment.

“I am remarkably well, thank you, considering how you have bullied

me—and I can tell you that I did not fancy at all being ordered about

by such an infant.”

“Oh! Thanks! But when a man’s too polite he doesn’t get anything done

for him—not in this business. And is it a crime to be an editor before

you are thirty?”

“Oh, you have reason to be proud of yourself.”

“You mean that I have the big head. Well, that is the disease of the

age, you know. It would never do for a newspaper man to get a reputation

for eccentricity. You’ll have it yourself inside of six months if these

paragraphs are a success.”

“Never! I scorn to be so unoriginal.”

“Well, we’ll encourage your sentiments, and keep you as the office

curio; but I didn’t really bully you, did I?”

“Oh, I’ll admit that you were kinder than I deserved, once in a while:

when I fell asleep at the lecture, for instance.”

He laughed heartily. “That was the richest joke. There was absolutely

nothing to say to you. If you only stood at the end of a long

perspective of this business and could fully appreciate the humour of

that situation! An experienced reporter, if he couldn’t have lied out of

it, or borrowed news, would never have shown up. You looked like a

naughty child expecting to have its ears boxed.”

“Oh, yes, Miss Merrien guyed me for a whole week; I know all about that

now. And now that you’ve come down off your pedestal I’ll thank you for

all your patience and good training. If I’ve learned to write I owe it

to your blue pencil; and I don’t need to be told by Miss Merrien that

you’ve saved me from a great deal of hard work.”

He smiled charmingly. There were times when he looked like an old man

with the mask of youth; to-day he looked a mere boy. “Oh, any one would

do as much for you, even if the Chief hadn’t given orders. You are an

unusual woman, you know. You proved that—but, of course, I have no

right to speak to you of that.” He stood up suddenly and held out his

hand. “Well, be good to yourself,” he said. “If you feel yourself

breaking, take a rest.”

“I wonder,” she thought, as she went downstairs, “if that young man

knows he betrayed the fact that he has been thinking a good deal about

me? He certainly is an interesting youth, and I should like to know him

better.”

Patience did not find her paragraphs as easy as she expected. It was one

thing to work on a given idea, and another to supply idea and execution

both; but after a time her sharpened brain grew more magnetic and life

fuller of ideas than of lay figures. The men in the office frequently

gave her tips, and one clever young reporter, who worshipped her from

afar, fell into the daily habit of presenting her with a slip of

suggestions.

Her choicest paragraphs were usually edited by Steele’s ruthless hand,

and now and again she was moved to wrath. Upon such occasions Mr. Steele

merely smiled, and she was forced to smile in return or retire with the

sulks.

VIII

Patience was writing busily in her little bedroom. The March winds were

howling down the street. Her door opened, and a very elegant young woman

entered.

“Hal!” cried Patience.

“You dear bad girl!”

They kissed a half dozen times, then sat down and looked at each other.

Hal had quite the young married woman air, and held herself with a mien

of conscious importance, entirely removed from conceit: she was _grande

dame_, and the late object of attentions from smart folks abroad.

“Well, how are you?” asked Patience. “Oh, but I am glad to see you. Tell

me all about yourself. When did you get back?”

“Day before yesterday. I’ve returned with thirty-two trunks, the

loveliest jewels you ever saw, and quite a slave of a husband. I must

say I never thought Latimer would keep up such a prolonged bluff, but he

fills the rôle as if he’d been husbanding all his life. Oh, no. Don’t

look at me like that. I’ve forgotten it, and I’ve no regrets. _Mon

Dieu!_ To think that I might be in Boston on four hundred a month! I

shall be a leader, my dear. You can do as much with a hundred and fifty

thousand a year as you can with a million, for you can only spend just

so much money anyhow. All that the big millionaires get out of their

wealth is notoriety. Nobody’d remember about them if it wasn’t for the

newspapers. But you bad bad girl! What have you been and gone and done?

Why didn’t you wait for me? I would have rescued you.”

“Oh, you couldn’t, Hal dear. I didn’t want to be rescued for a day or a

month. I’ve run away for good and all.”

“But, Patience, what an alternative! Do you mean to say you live in this

cubby-hole?”

“I’m mighty happy in this cubby-hole, I can tell you; happier than I

ever was at Peele Manor.”

“That certainly was the mistake of my life. However, you’ve solved the

problem more promptly than most women do. The celerity with which you

untied that knot when you set about it moved me to admiration. By the

way, do you know that Bev is ill?”

“Is he? What is the matter?”

“I don’t know exactly,—one of those organic afflictions that men are

always getting. How uninteresting men are when their interior

decorations get out of gear. And they always will talk about them.

Latimer is ever groaning with his liver; but no wonder. I’ve had to eat

so much rich stuff to keep him from feeling lonesome that I’ve actually

grown fat. Well, we don’t know what is the matter with Bev, yet. The

doctor says it’s a result of the influenza. He has some pain, and makes

an awful fuss, like all men.”

“Where are you going to stay, now?”

“I am at the Holland, but will spend the summer at the Manor and the

fall at Newport. Our house on the Avenue—opposite the park, you

know—will be finished by winter. That house will be a jewel. I got the

most beautiful things abroad for it. Then you will come and live with

me.”

Patience shook her head.

“It wouldn’t do, and you will see it. I belong to another sphere now;

but I can see you sometimes.”

“Well, put up that stuff, and come to the Holland and dine with me. You

can finish up to-night. I have yards and yards to talk to you about.

I’ll never give you up,—remember that.”

IX

When the hot days and nights of summer came Patience did not find

routine and the hunt as fascinating sport as when the electric thrill of

cooler seasons was in the air. Her paragraphs acquired some reputation,

and her mind grew tense in the effort to keep them up to a high

standard, and to prepare at least one surprise a day. She grew thin and

nervous, and began to wonder what life and herself would be like five

years hence. Mr. Field and Steele helped her as much as they dared, and

she managed to make about fifty dollars a week: her success gave Mr.

Field the excuse to pay her special rates. It never occurred to her to

give up, and she assured Hal that she would have nervous prostration

four times a year before she would return to Peele Manor.

There were times when she passionately longed for the isolation of a

mountain top. Nature had been part of her very individuality for all the

years of her life until this last, and a forested mountain top alone was

the antithesis of Park Row. She sometimes had a whimsical idea that her

grey matter was becoming slowly modelled into a semblance of that famous

precinct. She loved it loyally; but the isolation of high altitudes sent

their magnetism to another side of her nature. She was getting farther

and farther away from herself in the jealous absorption of her

work,—the skurrying practical details of her life. She felt that she

could no longer forecast what she should do under given circumstances,

that something in her was slowly changing. What the result would be she

could not predict; and she craved solitude and the opportunity to study

herself out.

In August Mrs. Field took her to her house in the Berkshire hills.

Although she had no solitude there, she returned much refreshed, and did

good work all winter. Steele she never saw outside of the office, but he

managed to treat her with a certain knightliness, and she lay awake,

occasionally, thinking about him. Hard work and the practical side of

life had disposed of a good deal of her romance, but she was still given

to vagaries. Steele’s modernity fascinated her. No other epoch but this

extraordinary last quarter of the nineteenth century could have produced

him.

She was a great favourite in the office. Again a thaw had succeeded a

second glacier period, induced by entire change of environment, and she

liked nearly everybody she knew, and became a most genial and expansive

young woman. She often laughed at herself, and concluded that she would

never strike the proper balance until she fell in love (if she ever

did), when the large and restless currents of her nature would unite and

find their proper destination. She had no “weird experiences.” Her

abounding feminity appealed to the chivalry of the gentlemen among whom

she was thrown, and she was clever enough not to flirt with them, to

treat them impartially as good comrades. The second-class men detested

her, and were not conciliated: the underbred newspaper man touches a

lower notch of vulgarity than any person of similar social degree the

world over.

* * * * *

One morning she awoke about four o’clock,—that is, her mind awoke; her

body was still too full of sleep to move to the right or left. It was

one of her favourite sensations, and she lay for a time meditating upon

the various pleasures, great and small, which are part of man’s

inheritance.

Suddenly she became conscious that it was raining. She had moved into a

back room on the second floor. Beside one window was a tin roof upon

which the rain poured with heavy reiterance. In the back yard was a

large ailanthus tree which lifted itself past her windows to the floor

above. A light wind rustled it. The rain pattered monotonously upon its

wide leaves, producing a certain sweet volume of sound.

It was long since she had listened to rain in the night. It was

associated in her mind with the vague sweet dreams of girlhood and with

her life in Carmel Valley. She had loved to wander through the pine

woods when the winter rains were beating through the uplifted arms,

swirling and splashing in the dark fragrant depths. It said something to

her then, she hardly knew what, nor when it roared upon the roof of the

old farmhouse, or flung itself through the windows of Carmel tower, as

she and Solomon huddled close to the wall.

But when it had beaten upon the roof of her little room in Miss

Tremont’s house it had sung the loneliness of youth into her soul,

murmured of the great joy to which every woman looks forward as her

birthright. Hard worked and absorbed as she may have been during the

day, if the rain awoke her in the night, it was to dreams of love and of

nothing else, and of the time when she should no longer be alone.

This morning she listened to the rain for a time, then moved suddenly to

her side, her eyes opening more widely in the dark. The rain said

nothing to her. She listened to it without a thrill, with no longing,

with no loneliness of soul, and no vague tremor of passion.

Nothing in her unhappy experience had so forcibly brought home to her

the changes which her inner self had undergone in the last few years.

Life was a hard clear-cut fact; she could no longer dream. Imagination

had taken itself out of her and gone elsewhere, into some brain whose

dear privilege it was to have a long future and a brief past.

The tears scalded her eyes. She cursed Beverly Peele. She wished she had

remained in Monterey. There, at least, she would never have married any

one, for there was no one to marry.

“Even if my life had been a success,” she thought, “if Beverly Peele had

been less objectionable, or had died, and I had had the world at my

feet, it would be too high a price to pay. Not even to care that one is

alone when the rain is sweeping about with that hollow song! To think

and dream of nothing beyond the moment! To have accepted life with

cynical philosophy, and feel no desire to shake the Universe with a

great passion! To be beyond the spell of the rain is to be a thousand

years old, and a thousand centuries away from the cosmic sense. I wish I

were dead.”

And there were other moods. Sometimes the devil which is an integral

part of all strong natures—of woman’s as well as of man’s, and no

matter what her creed—awoke and clamoured. There were four or five men

in the office whom she liked well enough when absent, and in whom the

lightning of her glance would have changed friendship to passion. Why

she resisted the temptation which so fiercely assailed her at times she

never knew. Conventions did not exist for her impatient mind excepting

in so far as they made life more comfortable; she had in full measure

youth’s power to know and to give joy, and she owed no one loyalty. And

at this time she imaged no future: she had lost faith in ideals. It was

only at brief intervals that there came a sudden passionate

desire—almost a flash of prophetic insight—for the one man who must

exist for her among the millions of men. And this, if anything, took the

place of her lost ideals and conquered the primal impulses of her

nature. Or was it a mere matter of destiny? Woman is a strange and

complex instrument. She is as she was made, and it is not well to

condemn her even after elaborate analysis.

X

One morning in May, Hal came in before Patience was out of bed. She sat

down on a chair and tapped the floor with her foot.

“I come charged with a message, a special mission, as it were,” she

said. “I hardly know where to begin.”

“Well?”

“Don’t look at me like that, or I’ll never have the courage to go on.

Bev is desperately ill,—not in bed, but he has the most frightful

pains: his disease, which has been threatening for a year, has

developed. It may or may not be fatal. The doctor says it certainly will

be unless he has peace of mind, and he is fretting after you like a big

baby. The grippe seems to have broken the back of his temper, and he is

simply a great calf bleating for its parent. It would be ridiculous if

it were not serious. You’d better come back to us, Patience.”

“I won’t.”

“I knew you would say exactly that; but when you think it over you will

come. Remember that the doctor practically says that you can either save

or prolong his life. Mamma is simply distracted. You know she adores

Bev, and she broke down completely last night and told me to come and

beg you to return. You know what that means: you’ll have nothing to fear

from her.”

“Oh, I can’t go back! I can’t! I think I should die if I went back.”

“We don’t die so easily, my dear. Now, I’ll go and let you think it

over,” and the diplomat kissed Patience and retired.

Patience endeavoured to put the matter out of her mind, but it harassed

her through her day’s duties, and her work was bad. Steele told her as

much the next afternoon when she came into the office late, intending to

write there instead of at home. Her room was haunted by Beverly’s pallid

face and sunken eyes.

“Oh, well,” she said, flinging herself down before a table, “perhaps

it’s the last, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Why? What do you mean? You do look pale. Are you ill?”

Patience hesitated a moment, then told him of the complication. He

listened, without comment, looking down upon the skurrying throngs.

“I suppose I must go,” she said in conclusion. “Anyway I feel that I

shall go, whether I want to or not.”

He came over to the table and regarded her with his preternatural

seriousness.

“Yes,” he said, “you will go. It will be like you.”

“Oh, I am no angel. It’s not that—please! It’s—don’t you know there

are some good acts you can’t help? Not only do traditions and

conventions drive you into them, but your own selfishness—I haven’t the

courage to be lashed by my conscience. If I could give that morphine, do

you think I’d go?”

He smiled. “Do you analyse everything like that? However, I choose to

keep to my illusions. I think that you have magnificent theories, but

act very much like other people. Can I go up and see you sometimes? I

may have a chance to know you, now.”

She put up her hand and took his impulsively. “Yes, come,” she said.

“That is the only thing that will make life supportable.”

XI

She went home and wrote the following letter to Beverly Peele:—

“I will return to Peele Manor and remain while you are seriously

ill, under the following conditions: (1) That you pay me what

you would be obliged to pay a trained nurse; (2) That you will

treat me on that basis absolutely. My feeling toward you has

undergone no change. I am not your wife. But as your physician

holds me responsible for your life, I will be your nurse on the

terms stated above.”

The next day she received this telegram:—

Come. Terms agreed to.

BEVERLY PEELE.

She was received by the various members of the household with infinite

tact. Mrs. Peele’s cold blue eyes sheltered an angry spark, but she

behaved to her errant daughter-in-law exactly as if matrimonial

vacations were orthodox and inevitable. Honora kissed her sweetly, and

asked her if the roses were not beautiful. When Mr. Peele came home he

said, “Ah, good-evening.” Beverly, who had evidently been coached, did

not offer to kiss her, but immediately explained every detail of his

disease. Hal and her husband were in the North Carolina mountains.

Beverly was not a good actor, and his eyes followed his wife with

kaleidoscopic expression. She frequently encountered hungry admiration

and angry resentment; and if he had made up his mind to abide by her

decree he as clearly evidenced that he considered her his salaried

property: he demanded her constant attendance. He looked so wan and

hopeless that Patience was moved to pity, and even to tenderness, and

devoted herself to his care.

For the first two weeks she felt hourly as if she must pack her trunk

and flit back to the “Day.” She longed for a very glimpse of the grimy

men in the composing-room, and felt that the sight of Morgan Steele in

his shirt sleeves would give more spiritual satisfaction than the green

and grey of the Palisades.

The life at Peele Manor seemed doubly flat after her emancipation. At

the breakfast table, Mrs. Peele and Honora discussed their small

interests. At luncheon, Beverly—who arose late—gave the details of his

night. At dinner there was little conversation of any sort. The

mornings, and the afternoons from four to six—when Beverly drove with

his mother and Honora—were Patience’s own. Although discontented, she

was by no means unhappy: she was out of bondage forever. If Beverly grew

better she could return to the “Day” after a reasonable time had

elapsed.

She spent most of her leisure rambling over the hills in idle reverie or

meditating upon her checkered life. She gave a good deal of thought to

the many phases of life which had flashed before her startled eyes in

the last year, but was too young not to be more interested in herself

than in problems, however momentous. Still, she did not feel much more

intimate with herself than she had felt in Park Row.

She frequently wondered with some pique and much disapproval that she

heard nothing from Morgan Steele. The few glimpses she had caught of the

nature behind the mask tempted her to idealise him, and she finally

succumbed. One night she awoke to the fact that she had been walking the

stars with him, discussing the mysteries of the Universe. She pictured

the smile with which he would regard the workings of her imagination,

were they revealed to him, and recalled his business-like demeanour, his

shirt sleeves, his Park Row vocabulary, and his impatient scorn of

“damned slush.”

It happened to be midnight when these later thoughts arrived, and she

laughed aloud.

“What are you laughing at?” demanded a querulous voice from the next

room.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Do you suppose I’m an idiot? Tell me what you were laughing

at.”

“Go to sleep, go to sleep.”

“I can’t go to sleep. You lie there and laugh while I lie here and

suffer.”

“Why didn’t you say you were suffering? Do you want the morphine?”

“No, I don’t.”

An hour later Patience was roused from her first heavy sleep.

“Patience! Patience! Oh, my God! My God! My God!”

Patience stumbled out of bed and into her dressing-gown and slippers,

shaking her head vigorously to dispel the vapours in her brain.

“Yes, yes!” she said. “I’m coming. Do please don’t make such a fuss.

You’ll wake up everybody—”

“Not make a fuss! Oh, I wish you had it for a minute—”

Patience ran into the lavatory and turned up the gas. The night was very

warm, and the door leading into Honora’s room stood wide. The light fell

full on her face. Patience saw that her eyes were open.

“I hope Beverly didn’t wake you up,” she said. “He does make such a

noise.”

“I was awake. I never sleep well in warm weather. I don’t envy you,

though.”

“Oh, I don’t mind if only I don’t make a terrible mistake some night and

give him an overdose. He takes particular pains to wait until I am in my

first sleep and then I hardly know what I am doing. There! this is the

third time I have dropped the wretched stuff. What is the good of drop

bottles, anyway?”

“Why don’t you use the hypodermic?”

“I can’t. It would make me ill to puncture people. And this does him as

much good.” She set the bottle down impatiently, drew a basin full of

cold water, dashed it over her face, then dropped the dose and took it

to Beverly.

“Stay with me,” he commanded. “You know it doesn’t take effect at once,

and I feel better if I hold your hand.” She sat down beside him and

nodded sleepily until the morphine did its work.

XII

The next afternoon, a few moments after Beverly had gone for his drive,

Morgan Steele’s card was brought up to Patience. She had imagined that

this first call would induce a mild thrill of nerve, but she merely

remarked to the butler: “Tell him I will be down in a moment,” walked to

the long mirror in the corner, and shook out her violet and white

organdie skirts. Her long hair was braided and tied with a lavender

ribbon.

“I look very well,” she thought, and went downstairs.

Steele awaited her in the drawing-room, and, as she entered, was

standing with his head thrown back, regarding the medallion of Whyte

Peele. She noted anew how well he dressed and carried his clothes. He

looked quite at home in the drawing-room of Peele Manor. Her first

remark followed in natural sequence,—

“How odd not to see you in your shirt sleeves.”

He turned with a start and a sudden warmth in his face.

“Oh, well, I hope you’ll never see me that way again. How charming you

look in that frock and with your hair in that braid! _I_ always imagine

_you_ in prim tailor things, with your hair tucked out of sight under a

stiff turban. This is lovely. You look like a little girl. Those awful

dress reformers should see you.”

“It’s a comfort to think that the She-males cannot exterminate the

artistic sense. Let us go into the library.”

“Is there a large comfortable chair there? These are impressive but

unpleasant. Perhaps you would not suspect it, but I love a comfortable

chair and a cigar better than anything in life.”

“One thing I do suspect—that we shall have to become acquainted all

over again. You are not exactly like a fallen angel outside of the

office, but you certainly have not patronised me for five minutes.”

“Oh, you can take your revenge now and patronise me. Hang the shop! I

don’t want to think about it.”

In the library he critically inspected every chair, selected one that

pleased him, and drawing it to the open window sank into it with a deep

sigh of content. Patience gave him permission to smoke, and a moment

later he looked so happy that she laughed aloud.

“You may laugh,” he said plaintively, “but you have less imagination

than I thought if you don’t understand what this is to a man after Park

Row. After an hour of that water and your muslin frock, I shall go back

as refreshed as if my brain had taken a cold bath.”

“I’d fly back to the office this minute if I could. I’ve felt like a

bottle of over-charged champagne for two weeks.”

“You have the enthusiasm of youth. When you are my age—sixty-five—you

will be thankful for the _dolce far niente_ of a colonial manor. This

sort of life suits you—you are a born châtelaine. You have lost your

tired expression, and are actually stouter. Besides, I want to come up

here to see you.”

“Will you come often?”

“As often as you will let me. I am free every afternoon, you know, and

if I followed my tactless inclination I’d come seven times a week.

However, don’t look alarmed; I’m only coming once a week—” He sat up

suddenly, his eyes sparkling. “By Jove!” he exclaimed. “What a beauty!”

Patience followed his eyes, which were directed ardently upon a

sail-boat skimming up the river.

“Are you fond of sailing?” she asked.

“Am I? I could live in a boat. I’d rather be in a boat than—than even

talking to you.”

“Well, you shall be inside of a boat in five minutes,” she said

good-naturedly. “Wait until I get my hat and gloves!”

“Being only the nurse,” she said, as they walked down the wooded slope

to the boathouse, “I don’t know that I have any right to take liberties,

but I will, all the same. I feel that it is an act of charity.”

“It certainly is, and you really are an angel.—She’s a good boat,” he

said approvingly, a few moments later, as he unreefed the sail.

Patience arranged the cushions and made herself comfortable, and they

shot up the river in a stiff breeze. She watched Steele curiously. He

looked as happy as a schoolboy. His hat was on the back of his head, his

eyes shone. Once as he threw back his head and laughed, he bore an

extraordinary resemblance to the Laughing Faun.

“I’ve lived in a boat for a whole summer,” he said, “and never seen a

woman nor wanted to, nor a man neither, for that matter. There are three

months in the year when I want nothing better in life than this.” His

large cool eyes moved slowly to hers. “Still,” he added, “I do believe

it’s an improvement to have you here. What fun if we had a little yacht

and could sail like this all summer! I think we’d hit it off, don’t you?

We shouldn’t either of us talk too much.”

Patience laughed. It was impossible to coquet with Steele. He took no

notice of it. “I should be afraid you’d tip me over if you got tired of

me.”

“I shouldn’t get tired of you,” he said seriously. “I never met a woman

I liked half as much. You’re lovely to look at, and your mind is so

interesting to study. Guess I’d better come about.”

They sailed for two hours. The wind fell, and they talked in a desultory

fashion. They discovered that they had the same literary gods, and

occasionally Steele waxed enthusiastic. He had read more than most men

of forty; nor was there anything youthful about the fixity of his

opinions.

“Oh, dear!” said Patience, suddenly, “why did we never meet before? I

like you better than any one I ever knew. I’ve been hunting all my life

for a mental companion.”

“So have I,” he said, smiling at her in his half cynical way, “and now

I’ve found you I don’t propose to let you go; not even next winter.”

He confided to her that he had written a good deal, although he had

published nothing. Patience wondered where he had found time to

accomplish so much.

“I’m going to bring up some of my stuff and read it to you,” he said.

“You can take that as a compliment if you like, for I’ve only shown it

to one other person—a man.”

“Now, I know why you like me! You are going to study me.”

“Well, it’s partly that,” he replied coolly. “You are a new type—to me

at any rate, and I shall probably know a good deal more after I have

known you a year or so than I do now. Who is that? What an

amiable-looking person!”

Patience followed his glance. Beverly stood at the foot of the slope,

with distorted face.

“Oh, dear,” she said, “that is Mr. Peele. I am afraid he is going to be

disagreeable. Of course I am not obliged to stay—but in a way I am.”

Steele ran the boat into the dock, handed her out, and reefed the sail

before he spoke. Then he turned and looked at her squarely.

“Would you rather I did not come?” he asked.

“No! No! I want you to come. I’ll think it over and write you—or—I

wonder if you are horrid like most men and would misunderstand me if I

asked you always to come on a certain day and meet me in that wood up

there, instead of going to the house?”

“Look here,” he said in his old business-like tone, “just let me set

your mind at rest. I haven’t the slightest intention of making love to

you. In the first place I am just now tired and sick of that sort of

thing—a state a man does get into occasionally, although a woman will

never believe it. In the second place I like to think of you as _sui

generis_; a woman on a pedestal. It is very refreshing. A week from

to-day I’ll be in that wood, and I’ll stay there from four to six

whether you come or not. There comes my train.”

“You must flag it. Hurry. I’ll expect you Thursday.”

XIII

“Who is that man?” thundered Beverly, as she crossed the track behind

the train.

Patience raised her eyebrows. “What have you to do with my visitors?”

“You sha’n’t receive men, and you sha’n’t sail in my boat.”

“Of course the boat is yours. I shall not use it again.”

“You are my nurse.”

“Your nurse is always ready to be dismissed,” and she walked up the

slope, taking no further notice of him.

Hal returned the following week; and, as Beverly improved steadily, the

house was filled with company once more. Whenever Patience hinted that

she was no longer required, Beverly immediately went to bed and rent the

air; but as a matter of fact his attacks were growing less and less

frequent.

Patience, in the circumstances, was not impatient to return to work

until the hot weather was over. Her position was very pleasant, Hal was

ever her loyal friend, and she saw Morgan Steele once a week.

The wood was a wild place on a slope of the bluff some distance above

the house. Its underbrush made it unpopular with the guests of Peele

Manor. Steele left the train at the regular station a mile up the road

and walked back without encounter. In the heart of the dark cool little

wood Patience swung two hammocks and filled them with pillows. Steele

lay full length in his and looked comfortable and happy, a cigar ever

between his lips. Patience, in hers, sat in as dignified an attitude as

she could assume.

“Does it make you feel romantic?” he said one day, looking at her

quizzically.

“What do you mean?” she asked, flushing a little.

“Oh, I think you have a queer romantic sentimental streak through your

modernity—or had. I’ve been wondering if there was any of it left.”

“I never told you.”

“No, but you suggest it. Tell me: didn’t you once have ideals and that

sort of thing?”

“I don’t see how you can even guess it, for I have none now.”

“Oh, yes, you have. You won’t when you’re thirty, but you have all sorts

of kiddish notions stored away yet in that brain of yours.” He had seen

Peele a few days before in the train, and knew the history of their

courtship quite as well as if she had related it to him, but he was

curious to know what she had been before. He drew her on until she told

him the story of the tower and the owl.

That little picture pleased his artistic sense, but when she described

her girlish ideals and dreams he threw back his head and laughed loud

and long.

“What would I have done with you if I had met you then?” he said,

looking with intense amusement at her half angry face. “I should have

run, I expect. You are a thousand times more interesting now.”

“Not to myself.”

“Of course not, because you are less of an egoist, and draw a larger

measure of your individuality from your environment. But you are real

now, where before you were unreal—you were a sort of waxwork with

numerous dents. The two extremes in this world are nature and

civilisation. Children belong by right to nature, and she holds on to

them as long as possible. When civilisation gets hold of them she

proceeds to pick out with a pair of tweezers all but the primal

passions; and the result is the only human variety capable of enjoying

life.”

“Don’t you believe in ideals?” asked Patience, rather wistfully.

“Of course not,” he said contemptuously. “Life is what it is, and you

can’t alter it. And as we are only just so big and have only just so

many years in which to get over a limited surface of this mighty

complication called Life, all we can do is to keep our eyes open, and

pick out here and there what appeals to our taste most strongly,

swallowing the disagreeable majority as philosophically as possible.

When you know the world—and yourself—you can’t have ideals, and the

sooner you quit wasting time thinking about them the sooner you begin to

enjoy life. And remember that we live but from day to day—we may be a

cold cadaver to-morrow. Life is a game of chance. To set up ideals is as

purposeless as to waste this life preparing for an impossible next. Omar

expressed it better than I can when he said:—

“‘To-morrow? Why, to-morrow I myself may be

With yesterday’s seven thousand years.’”

“You have certain ideals though,” said Patience. “You are intellectually

ambitious; and you say that you never run after a merely pretty face,

and never wasted time on any sort of woman unless she had brains; and

the men at the office say that you are scrupulously square in money

matters. So that I can’t see that you are altogether without ideals.”

“Those are mere matters of taste and worldly sense. I aim for nothing

that is impossible. When I think I want a thing I set about to

accomplish it. If I find that it is impossible I quit without further

loss of time. You don’t suppose I have an ideal woman, do you? How can

any man that knows women?—although he may often succumb to a happy

combination. When I was exactly twelve my Sunday School teacher

forestalled any inclination I might have developed to idealise woman. I

met her once after I was grown, by the way, and it did me good to tell

her what I thought of her. That is where you women have the advantage of

us. It is so long before you know man at all that after you do it is

hard work making him over as he is. The woman never lived that

understood man by intuition. That is the reason a woman so seldom has

any fascination but that of mere youth until she’s pretty well on to

thirty. You, of course, have had an exceptional experience, but you are

a good deal of a kid yet.”

XIV

Morgan Steele was a type of the precocious young United States newspaper

man which only this end of the century has evolved: Preternaturally wise

in the way of the world and the nature of woman; with young blood and

cold judgment; wary, deliberate, calculating; full of kind impulses;

generous with his money, yet careful of it; ready to make cold-blooded

use of a man to-day and offer him a free lodging to-morrow; possessed of

more self-control than the Club man of forty; without sentimentality,

yet with a certain limited power of loving; having a thorough

appreciation of the finer as of the coarser shades of woman; incapable

of a blind supreme rush of feeling, through the habit of eternal

analysis; placidly and philosophically content with the present, and

fully expecting to be laid away in the past at forty; _blasé_, yet full

of boyish delight in outdoor sport; having faith in no woman, yet

treating the lowest with a cynical kindness and consideration which was

part of his philosophy.

One night he faced the question of his relationship to Patience with his

usual deliberation.

He lay on a divan in his bachelor quarters: a long room with bedroom and

bath attached. The walls of the living-room were covered with red paper,

the doors and windows hung with Smyrna cloth. A rug half covered the

stained floor. Between the windows was a large desk covered with papers.

A long table was strewn thick with magazines. Small bookcases were

filled with the works of Omar, Whitman, Emerson, Hugo, Heine, Dumas,

Maupassant, Bourget, Pater, Dobson, Herrick, Ibsen, Zola, Landor,

Rabelais, Stevenson, Kipling. On the mantel there was a number of

photographs and a notable absence of legs. The walls were covered with

artists’ sketches.

“The summer will pass harmlessly enough,” he thought. “I only see her

once a week, and her husband is likely to be hidden in the brush; but

when she returns to town in the winter I shall find myself calling on

her every night. I’m not stuck on matrimony, but I certainly should like

her for a companion in a little house or double apartment where there

would be plenty of elbow room and some chance of keeping up the

illusions. I think it would be some years before I should tire of her,

and I think I could love her a good deal. Why in thunder doesn’t the man

die? She’s too good for anything else. It would be a terrible pity—the

details smirch so. A novelist would remark at this point, ‘And yet he

never thought of sparing her.’ No, my dear fictionist, we don’t, nor if

she loved me would she thank me for sparing her. And yet it would be a

pity. She is like some delicate wild-flower that has been transplanted.

I should like to offer her the best one can, instead of practically

remarking: ‘My dear, this brain racket is worked out for the present.

We’ll return to it later, or not at all.’

“It is often a clever thing for those that love and cannot marry to part

when the shock comes: they coddle the misery and have a glorious time

suffering. But that would not do for us. We live in the thick and rush

of life, and have no time to sit down with memories, hardly time enough

to realise an ache. We must have our day in fact or not at all; and

afterward, thank God, there is again no time for memories. Well, this is

only the eighth of July. By winter that intolerable nuisance may be in

the family vault.”

XV

People remarked that summer that Patience looked unusually well. At

times her eyes had a certain liquid softness, at others they sparkled

wickedly. Her colour was beautiful and her manner and conversation full

of animation.

It was on a hot August afternoon that Patience and Steele, in the green

shades of their wood, suddenly met each other’s eyes and burst out

laughing.

“We are in love,” said Patience.

“Well—yes—I suppose we are.”

“I feel very light-minded over this unexpected _dénouement_. I had

imagined all sorts of dramatic climaxes; but the unexpected always will

happen in this life—more’s the pity.”

“Did you expect we should not fall in love?”

“I did not think about it at all for a time—just drifted. But as the

situation is so serious it is as well to take it humourously. What are

we going to do about it?”

He had removed his cigar, and was regarding her with his contemplative

stare. “I have thanked your complicated ancestors more than once for

your large variety of moods. I am glad and sorry that you have spoken:

sorry, because this was very pleasant; glad that the discussion of ways

and means should take place here instead of in town. I shall be brutally

frank. How long is your husband likely to live?”

“He may live for twenty years. I heard the doctors—they have a

consultation every once in a while—tell Mrs. Peele so the other day. He

is much better. On the other hand, he might take a turn for the worse

any day.”

“Then you must persuade him to give you a divorce.”

“Oh, dear, I am afraid that is out of the question. I’ve thought of it;

but—you don’t know him.”

“You are a clever woman: now look up your resources. Enlist the family

on your side. Tell them that you are about to leave, never to return,

and that you are on the road to become a famous newspaper woman; that if

they will persuade your husband to give you a divorce you will drop

their name; otherwise that it will be dinned in their ears for the next

twenty years. Tell them that we intend to let you sign hereafter. That

ought to fetch them, as they appear to look upon the newspaper business

with shuddering horror. And persuade them that Beverly needs a good

domestic little wife who would gladden his declining years.”

“I’m sorry I feel in this mood,” said Patience, abruptly. “I should far

rather it had been the other way—the usual way. I suppose I am

possessed with what Poe calls The Imp of the Perverse.”

“My dear girl, I need not remind you that it is just as well and a good

deal better. You need a shaking to wake you up, though. You imagine that

you are awake already, but you are not—not by a long sight. You have

buried your nature five fathoms deep. Well, time is up. I must be off.

Think over what I have said. Good-bye.”

XVI

On the following Thursday morning Patience walked slowly over to where

Beverly sat under a tree on one of the lawns, reading a newspaper. She

had made up her mind to adopt Steele’s advice, but had deferred the evil

moment as long as possible.

“Beverly,” she said abruptly, sitting down in front of him, “I want to

speak to you.”

He laid down the newspaper and regarded her with eager admiration. She

had carefully selected the most unbecoming frock she possessed, a sickly

green, and twisted her hair in a fashion to distort the fine lines of

her head. Nevertheless, she looked as fresh as the morning, and her eyes

sparkled with excitement.

“What is it?” he asked. “Oh, why—why—”

“Never mind! I am going to have a business talk with you, and please

don’t get excited. If you do, you’ll be sure to have a pain, you know.”

“Well, what is it? It doesn’t do a fellow any good to keep him in

suspense.”

“On the first of November I am going away—”

“You are not!”

“And I shall not come back—not in any circumstances. You have proved

that your attacks are more or less under your own control. A sojourn at

some foreign baths will probably cure you. I have given you all of my

life that I intend to give you. I know that self-sacrifice is the ideal

of happiness of some women, but it is not mine. When I leave here on the

first of November it will be forever. There is no inducement, material

nor sentimental, that will bring me back. Do you understand that much

clearly?”

He burst into a volley of oaths, and beat his knees with his fists.

Patience continued as soon as she could be heard:—

“Now, it can do you no possible good to retain a legal hold on me, nor

can you care to hear of your name becoming familiar in Park Row. Give me

my freedom, and I will take my own name—”

“You’ll get no divorce,” he roared, “now nor ever. Do you understand

that? I’ll brace up and live until I’m ninety—by God I will! I’ll go

abroad and live at a water cure. You’ll never be the wife of any other

man. Do you understand that?”

“Oh, Beverly,” she said, breaking suddenly, “don’t be cruel,—don’t!

What good can it do you? Give me my freedom.”

He grasped her wrists. His eyes were full of rage and malevolence. “Do

you want to marry some one else?” he asked. “Some damned newspaper man,

I suppose.”

Patience stood up and shook him off. “If ever I do marry another man,”

she said cuttingly, “you may be sure he will have brains this time, and

that he will also be a gentleman. The most vulgar persons I have ever

known have been socially the most highly placed.”

As she moved away he sprang after her and caught her arm. “Now look

here,” he said hoarsely, “you’ll neither marry, nor will you have a

lover, unless you want all New York to know it. The moment you leave

this place a detective goes after you. You’ll do nothing that I don’t

know. I may not have brains, but I’ll get the best of you all the same.”

Patience flung him off and went straight to Mrs. Peele. Her

mother-in-law watched her with narrowed eyes until she had finished,

then remarked unexpectedly: “I shall do my best to make my son divorce

you. If you intend to leave us I prefer that the rupture should be

complete. As you suggest, I have no desire to see the name of Peele

signed to newspaper articles. Moreover, I believe I can persuade my son

to marry again,—a woman of his own station, who will not desecrate the

name of wife; and who,” with sudden violence, “will give this house an

heir.” She paused a moment to recover herself, then continued more

calmly: “I have talked the matter over with my husband, and he agrees

with me. Of course, you will expect no alimony.”

“I don’t want alimony. I make more with my pen than Beverly ever allowed

me.”

The red came into Mrs. Peele’s face. “My son was quite as generous as

was to be expected. Moreover, he had the right to demand that his wife

should not come to him empty handed. I shall speak to Beverly.”

An hour later Patience met Mrs. Peele in the side hall. The older woman

looked flushed and excited. “I have had a most terrible interview with

Beverly,” she exclaimed. “I can do nothing with him. You little fool,

why didn’t you swear that you did not want to marry another man? Heaven

knows I should prefer to have you take another name as soon as possible;

but you have ruined your chances by letting Beverly suspect the truth.”

Patience sank upon a chair, and sat for a long while staring straight

before her. She felt the incarnation of rage and hate. Her lovely face

was set and repellent. She came to herself with a start, and wondered if

she had ever had any womanly impulses.

She had never wanted anything in her life as much as she wanted to marry

Morgan Steele. His very unlikeness to all her old ideals fascinated her,

and she was convinced that she was profoundly in love. She could hardly

imagine what life with him would be like, and was the more curious to

ascertain; and the obstacles enraged her impatient spirit.

The butler left the dining-room to announce luncheon.

“Send mine up to my room,” she said. As she reached the first landing of

the stair she turned to him suddenly. “Tell John to go to New York this

afternoon, and have Mr. Beverly’s morphine bottle filled. He took the

last last night and he may need it again before I go down myself. Don’t

fail to tell him. The bottle is in the lavatory.”

That afternoon she met Steele at the edge of the wood.

“I could not keep still,” she said. “My brain feels on fire.”

He drew her hand through his arm and held it tenderly. “What is it?” he

asked. “Did you speak, and was it disagreeable?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute. Just now it is enough to feel you here.”

“I can only stay an hour. I should not have come at all, but I could not

stay away.”

When they reached the hammocks Patience flung herself into hers and told

the story of the morning with dramatic indignation. Then, insensibly,

she drifted into the story of her married life, and described her

intense hatred and loathing of her husband.

“It was all my own fault,” she said in conclusion. “I married him with

my eyes open; but all the same I hate him. Sometimes I felt, and feel

yet, fairly murderous. I seem to have a terrible nature—does it make

you hate me?”

He laughed. “No, I don’t hate you, and you know it quite as well as I

do. You have wonderful possibilities—but I can’t quite make up my mind

that I am the man—”

“Oh, yes, you are. I could love you as much as I hate Beverly Peele.”

“Well, if you think so it amounts to the same thing, for a while at

least. I shall come again in a few days. I’ll write you. If your husband

cannot be induced to change his mind I’ll talk to you about a paper that

has been offered to me in Texas; but if you prefer it the other way,

I’ll leave you alone without a word.”

“Oh, I don’t know! There are some words I hate,—the words free-love and

adultery. I don’t want to be exploited in the newspapers, and I don’t

want to be insulted by my landlord. After all, expediency is the source

of all morality. My life with you would be a thousand times better than

it was with Beverly Peele; but I suspect that we can’t violate certain

moral laws that heredity has made part of our brain fibre, without

ultimate regret, even when we keep the world in ignorance. I suffered

horribly once, although I had not defied the conventions. But I think we

must have everything, or the large share of herself that Nature has

given each of us rebels,—in other words, the ideal is not complete.”

“When you are very much in love,” he said dryly, “you won’t analyse.”

Contrary to her habit, she remained in the wood for some time after he

left her. Suddenly she was aroused from her reverie by a peculiar heavy

sound, as of a man crawling. She listened intently, her hair stiffening:

the house was a quarter of a mile away. The sound continued steadily.

She sprang to her feet and fled from the wood. As she ran up the hill

beyond, she glanced fearfully over her shoulder. A man shot from the

lower edge of the wood and ran toward the stables.

XVII

An hour after midnight Patience ran into Honora’s room and shook her

violently.

“Honora! Honora!” she cried, “something is the matter with Beverly. I

can’t wake him up.”

Honora stretched herself languidly. Her eyelids fluttered a moment, then

lifted. She said sleepily:

“What is it, Patience?”

“Beverly! Go to him—quick—while I wake up Mr. and Mrs. Peele, and send

for the doctor. He dropped his own morphine to-night, and he must have

taken too much.”

A few moments later there was an alarmed group of people at Beverly

Peele’s bedside, and the butler could be heard at the telephone

demanding the doctor.

Mr. Peele was in his pyjamas, and Patience struggled with an importunate

desire to tell him that his hair stood on end. Mrs. Peele’s back hair

was in a scant braid; the front locks were on pins. Her skin looked

pallid and old. Honora, as usual, looked like a vision from heaven. Hal

and her husband were in Newport, and there were no guests at Peele

Manor.

“Are you sure,” asked Mr. Peele, as precisely as if his hair was parted

in the middle and plastered on each side, “that anything is the matter?

Does not the morphine always put him to sleep?”

“Not at once. You see he takes it internally, and it’s twenty minutes or

half an hour before it takes effect. During that time he always groans,

for he never takes it until the last minute. I heard him get up and

return to bed; and then I knew something must be the matter because he

was so quiet—”

“How could you let him drop it himself?” exclaimed Mrs. Peele,

passionately. “How could you? What are you here for?”

“I offered to drop it for him, but he wouldn’t let me. I didn’t insist,

as he always put it off—and we had had a quarrel—”

“My poor son!”

“Well, something’s got to be done,” said Mr. Peele. “I don’t like the

way he’s beginning to breathe. There are one or two things we can do

until the doctor comes.”

He raised Beverly’s arms above the head, brought them down and pressed

them into the chest, repeating the act twenty or thirty times. Beverly

meanwhile was breathing stertorously.

“Can’t I do something?” cried his mother, distractedly.

“I think we had better walk him,” said Mr. Peele, whose mouth was

tightening. “Call Hickman.”

The butler was waiting in the hall, and came at once. He helped Mr.

Peele to lift the young man from the bed. The stalwart figure hung

limply between them: he was as collapsed as the new dead. Mr. Peele and

Hickman walked him up and down the long line of rooms, shaking him

vigorously from time to time; but they would have produced as much

effect upon the bolster. Mrs. Peele had sunk into a chair. She sat with

compressed lips, and dilating eyes fixed upon Patience. Honora knelt

beside her, patting her hand. After a time she arose, liberated Mrs.

Peele’s hair from its braid and steels, and arranged it with deft hands,

fetching some of her own amber pins.

Patience sat on the edge of the bed. She was beginning to feel

hopelessly sleepy. The day’s excitement had sapped her nerves. It was

now nearly two o’clock, and she had not slept. Beverly had been ill the

night before and given her little rest. She felt bitterly ashamed of

herself; but every few moments she was obliged to cover her face with

her handkerchief to conceal a yawn. Once or twice her head dropped

suddenly.

The last time she sat up with a gasp. Mrs. Peele groaned. The two men

had entered with their burden. Beverly’s face was blue, and he breathed

infrequently.

“His body is bathed in a cold perspiration,” said Mr. Peele. “Will that

doctor never come?”

“O my God!” murmured Mrs. Peele.

Patience left the bed and sat on the sill of the window. The night was

very hot and still. A shuddering horror took possession of her. A

palpable presence seemed skimming the dark gulf under the window. She

sat with distended eyes, half expecting to see a long arm reach past her

and pluck the soul from the unconscious man on the bed. She closed her

eyes and put her fingers in her ears. When she removed them she drew a

long breath.

“The doctor is coming,” she said. “I hear the wheels.”

“Did you make him understand what was the matter?” asked Mr. Peele of

the butler.

“Yes, sir. He said he would bring everything necessary.”

When the doctor came in he bent over the sick man and lifted his

eyelids.

“It is morphine poisoning, sure enough,” he said. “Have some black

coffee made. I shall use the electricity meanwhile. Better telegraph to

New York. I don’t like this case, and don’t want it alone.”

Patience watched them mechanically for an hour, then slipped into her

own room and into her bed. Nature had conquered her. Another moment, and

she would have fallen to the floor in sleep.

Four hours later she was awakened by a vigorous shaking of her shoulder.

She sat upright and glanced about wildly. “What is it? What is the

matter?” she cried. “I had such a horrible dream. I thought Beverly was

drowning me—holding me down under the water—”

“Your husband is dead,” said the doctor. “Do you wish to go to him?”

Patience shrank under the bedclothes, pulling them about her head. After

the doctor had gone she ran over to a spare room, opened all the windows

to admit light, then went to bed and slept until late in the day.