IV

"Barbee," said Judge Morris one morning a fortnight later, "what

has become of Marguerite? One night not long ago you complained of

her as an obstacle in the path of your career: does she still annoy

you with her attentions? You could sue out a writ of habeas corpus

in your own behalf if she persists. I'd take the case. I believe

you asked me to mark your demeanor on the evening of that party. I

tried to mark it; but I did not discover a great deal of demeanor

to mark."

The two were sitting in the front office. The Judge, with nothing

to do, was facing the street, his snow-white cambric handkerchief

thrown across one knee, his hands grasping the arms of his chair,

the newspaper behind his heels, his straw hat and cane on the floor

at his side, and beside them the bulldog--his nose thrust against

the hat.

Barbee was leaning over his desk with his fingers plunged in his

hair and his eyes fixed on the law book before him--unopened. He

turned and remarked with dry candor:

"Marguerite has dropped me."

"If she has, it's a blessed thing."

"There was more depth to her than I thought."

"There always is. Wait until you get older."

"I shall have to work and climb to win her."

"You might look up meantime the twentieth verse of the twenty-ninth

chapter of Genesis."

Barbee rose and took down a Bible from among the law books: it had

been one of the Judge's authorities, a great stand-by for reference

and eloquence in his old days of pleading. He sat down and read

the verse and laid the volume aside with the mere comment: "All

this time I have been thinking her too much of a child; I find that

she has been thinking the same of me."

"Then she has been a sound thinker."

"The result is she has wandered away after some one else. I know

the man; and I know that he is after some one else. Why do people

desire the impossible person? If I had been a Greek sculptor and

had been commissioned to design as my masterwork the world's Frieze

of Love, it should have been one long array of marble shapes, each

in pursuit of some one fleeing. But some day Marguerite will be

found sitting pensive on a stone--pursuing no longer; and when I

appear upon the scene, having overtaken her at last, she will sigh,

but she will give me her hand and go with me: and I'll have to

stand it. That is the worst of it. I shall have to stand it--that

she preferred the other man."

The Judge did not care to hear Barbee on American themes with Greek

imagery. He yawned and struggled to his feet with difficulty.

"I'll take a stroll," he said; "it is all I can take."

Barbee sprang forward and picked up for him his hat and cane. The

dog, by what seemed the slow action of a mental jackscrew, elevated

his cylinder to the tops of his legs; and presently the two stiff

old bodies turned the corner of the street, one slanting, one

prone: one dotting the bricks with his three legs, the other with

his four.

Formerly the man and the brute had gone each his own way, meeting

only at meal time and at irregular hours of the night in the

Judge's chambers. The Judge had his stories regarding the origin

of their intimacy. He varied these somewhat according to the

sensibilities of the persons to whom they were related--and there

were not many habitues of the sidewalks who did not hear them

sooner or later. "No one could disentangle fact and fiction and

affection in them.

"Some years ago," he said one day to Professor Hardage, "I was a

good deal gayer than I am now and so was he. We cemented a

friendship in a certain way, no matter what: that is a story I'm

not going to tell. And he came to live with me on that footing of

friendship. Of course he was greatly interested in the life of his

own species at that time; he loved part of it, he hated part; but

he was no friend to either. By and by he grew older. Age removed

a good deal of his vanity, and I suppose it forced him to part with

some portion of his self-esteem. But I was growing older myself

and no doubt getting physically a little helpless. I suppose I

made senile noises when I dressed and undressed, expressive of my

decorative labors. This may have been the reason; possibly not;

but at any rate about this time he conceived it his duty to give up

his friendship as an equal and to enter my employ as a servant. He

became my valet--without wages--and I changed his name to 'Brown.'

"Of course you don't think this true; well, then, don't think it

true. But you have never seen him of winter mornings get up before

I do and try to keep me out of the bath-tub. He'll station himself

at the bath-room door; and as I approach he will look at me with an

air of saying; 'Now don't climb into that cold water! Stand on the

edge of it and lap it if you wish! But don't get into it. Drink

it, man, don't wallow in it.' He waits until I finish, and then he

speaks his mind plainly again: 'Now see how wet you are! And

to-morrow you will do the same thing.' And he will stalk away,

suspicious of the grade of my intelligence.

"He helps me to dress and undress. You'd know this if you studied

his face when I struggle to brush the dust off of my back and

shoulders: the mortification, the sense of injustice done him, in

his having been made a quadruped. When I stoop over to take off my

shoes, if I do it without any noise and he lies anywhere near, very

well; but if I am noisy about it, he always comes and takes a seat

before me and assists. Then he makes his same speech: 'What a

shame that you should have to do this for yourself, when I am here

to do it for you, but have no hands.'

"You know his portrait in my sitting room. When it was brought

home and he discovered it on the wall, he looked at it from

different angles, and then came across to me with a wound and a

grievance: 'Why have you put that thing there? How can you, who

have me, tolerate such a looking object as that? See the meanness

in his face! See how used up he is and how sick of life! See what

a history is written all over him--his crimes and disgraces! And

you can care for him when you have _me_, your Brown.' After I am

dead, I expect him to publish a memorial volume entitled

'Reminiscences of the late Judge Ravenel Morris, By his former

Friend, afterward his Valet, _Taurus-Canis_.'"

The long drowsing days of summer had come. Business was almost

suspended; heat made energy impossible. Court was not in session,

farmers were busy with crops. From early morning to late afternoon

the streets were well-nigh deserted.

Ravenel Morris found life more active for him during this idlest

season of his native town. Having no business to prefer, people

were left more at leisure to talk with him; more acquaintances sat

fanning on their doorsteps and bade him good night as he passed

homeward. There were festivals in the park; and he could rest on

one of the benches and listen to the band playing tunes. He had

the common human heart in its love of tunes. When tunes stopped,

music stopped for him. If anything were played in which there was

no traceable melody, when the instruments encountered a tumult of

chords and dissonances, he would exclaim though with regretful

toleration:

"What are they trying to do now? What is it all about? Why can't

music be simple and sweet? Do noise and confusion make it better

or greater?"

One night Barbee had him serenaded. He gave the musicians

instruction as to the tunes, how they were to be played, in what

succession, at what hour of the night. The melodists grouped

themselves in the middle of the street, and the Judge came out on a

little veranda under one of his doors and stood there, a great

silver-haired figure, looking down. The moonlight shone upon him.

He remained for a while motionless, wrapped loosely in what looked

like a white toga. Then with a slight gesture of the hand full of

mournful dignity he withdrew.

It was during these days that Barbee, who always watched over him

with a most reverent worship and affection, made a discovery. The

Judge was breaking; that brave life was beginning to sink and

totter toward its fall and dissolution. There were moments when

the cheerfulness, which had never failed him in the midst of trial,

failed him now when there was none; when the ancient springs of

strength ceased to run and he was discovered to be feeble.

Sometimes he no longer read his morning newspaper; he would sit for

long periods in the front door of his office, looking out into the

street and caring not who passed, not even returning salutations:

what was the use of saluting the human race impartially? Or going

into the rear office, he would reread pages and chapters of what at

different times in his life had been his favorite books: "Rabelais"

and "The Decameron" when he was young; "Don Quixote" later, and

"Faust"; "Clarissa" and "Tom Jones" now and then; and Shakespeare

always; and those poems of Burns that tell sad truths; and the

account of the man in Thackeray who went through so much that was

large and at the end of life was brought down to so much that was

low. He seemed more and more to feel the need of grasping through

books the hand of erring humanity. And from day to day his

conversations with Barbee began to take more the form of counsels

about life and duty, about the ideals and mistakes and virtues and

weaknesses in men. He had a good deal to say about the ethics of

character in the court room and in the street.

One afternoon Barbee very thoughtfully asked him a question:

"Uncle, I have wanted to know why you always defended and never

prosecuted. The State is supposed to stand for justice, and the

State is the accuser; in always defending the accused and so in

working against the State, have you not always worked against

justice?"

The Judge sat with his face turned away and spoke as he sat--very

gravely and quietly: "I always defended because the State can

punish only the accused, and the accused is never the only

criminal. In every crime there are three criminals. The first

criminal is the Origin of Evil. I don't know what the Origin of

Evil is, or who he is; but if I could have dragged the Origin of

Evil into the court room, I should have been glad to try to have it

hanged, or have him hanged. I should have liked to argue the

greatest of all possible criminal cases: the case of the Common

People vs. the Devil--so nominated. The second criminal is all

that coworked with the accused as involved in his nature, in his

temptation, and in his act. If I could have arraigned all the

other men and women who have been forerunners or copartners of the

accused as furthering influences in the line of his offence, I

should gladly have prosecuted them for their share of the guilt.

But most of the living who are accessory can no more be discovered

and summoned than can the dead who also were accessory. You have

left the third criminal; and the State is forced to single him out

and let the full punishment fall upon him alone. Thus it does not

punish the guilty--it punishes the last of the guilty. It does not

even punish him for his share of the guilt: it can never know what

that share is. This is merely a feeling of mine, I do not uphold

it. Of course I often declined to defend also."

They returned to this subject another afternoon as the two sat

together a few days later:

"There was sometimes another reason why I felt unwilling to

prosecute: I refer to cases in which I might be taking advantage of

the inability of a fellow-creature to establish his own innocence.

I want you to remember this--nothing that I have ever said to you

is of more importance: a good many years ago I was in Paris. One

afternoon I was walking through the most famous streets in the

company of a French scholar and journalist, a deep student of the

genius of French civilization. As we passed along, he pointed out

various buildings with reference to the history that had been made

and unmade within them. At one point he stopped and pointed to a

certain structure with a high wall in front of it and to a hole in

that wall. 'Do you know what that is?' he asked. He told me. Any

person can drop a letter into that box, containing any kind of

accusation against any other person; it is received by the

authorities and it becomes their duty to act upon its contents. Do

you know what that means? Can you for a moment realize what is

involved? A man's enemy, even his so-called religious enemy, any

assassin, any slanderer, any liar, even the mercenary who agrees to

hire out his honor itself for the wages of a slave, can deposit an

anonymous accusation against any one whom he hates or wishes to

ruin; and it becomes the duty of the authorities to respect his

communication as much as though it came before a court of highest

equity. An innocent man may thus become an object of suspicion,

may be watched, followed, arrested and thrown into prison,

disgraced, ruined in his business, ruined in his family; and if in

the end he is released, he is never even told what he has been

charged with, has no power of facing his accuser, of bringing him

to justice, of recovering damages from the State. While he himself

is kept in close confinement, his enemy may manufacture evidence

which he alone would be able to disprove; and the chance is never

given him to disprove it."

The Judge turned and looked at Barbee in simple silence.

Barbee sprang to his feet: "It is a damned shame!" he cried. "Damn

the French! damn such a civilization."

"Why damn the French code? In our own country the same thing goes

on, not as part of our system of jurisprudence, but as part of our

system of--well, we'll say--morals. In this country any man's

secret personal enemy, his so-called religious enemy for instance,

may fabricate any accusation against him. He does not drop it into

the dark crevice of a dead wall, but into the blacker hole of a

living ear. A perfectly innocent man by such anonymous or

untraceable slander can be as grossly injured in reputation, in

business, in his family, out of a prison in this country as in a

prison in France. Slander may circulate about him and he will

never even know what it is, never be confronted by his accuser,

never have power of redress.

"Now what I wish you to remember is this: that in the very nature

of the case a man is often unable to prove his innocence. All over

the world useful careers come to nothing and lives are wrecked,

because men may be ignorantly or malignantly accused of things of

which they cannot stand up and prove that they are innocent. Never

forget that it is impossible for a man finally to demonstrate his

possession of a single great virtue. A man cannot so prove his

bravery. He cannot so prove his honesty or his benevolence or his

sobriety or his chastity, or anything else. As to courage, all

that he can prove is that in a given case or in all tested cases he

was not a coward. As to honesty, all that he can prove is that in

any alleged instance he was not a thief. A man cannot even

directly prove his health, mental or physical: all that he can

prove is that he shows no unmistakable evidences of disease. But

an enemy may secretly circulate the charge that these evidences

exist; and all the evidences to the contrary that the man himself

may furnish will never disperse that impression. It is so for

every great virtue. His final possession of a single virtue can be

proved by no man.

"This was another reason why I was sometimes unwilling to prosecute

a fellow-creature; it might be a case in which he alone would

actually know whether he were innocent, but his simple word would

not be taken, and his simple word would be the only proof that he

could give. I ask you, as you care for my memory, never to take

advantage of the truth that the man before you, as the accused, may

in the nature of things be unable to prove his innocence. Some day

you are going to be a judge. Remember you are always a judge; and

remember that a greater Judge than you will ever be gave you the

rule: 'Judge as you would be judged.' The great root of the matter

is this: that all human conduct is judged; but a very small part of

human conduct is ever brought to trial."

He had many visitors at his office during these idle summer days.

He belonged to a generation of men who loved conversation--when

they conversed. All the lawyers dropped in. The report of his

failing strength brought these and many others.

He saw a great deal of Professor Hardage. One morning as the two

met, he said with more feeling than he usually allowed himself to

show: "Hardage, I am a lonesome old man; don't you want me to come

and see you every Sunday evening? I always try to get home by ten

o'clock, so that you couldn't get tired of me; and as I never fall

asleep before that time, you wouldn't have to put me to bed. I

want to hear you talk, Hardage. My time is limited; and you have

no right to shut out from me so much that you know--your learning,

your wisdom, yourself. And I know a few things that I have picked

up in a lifetime. Surely we ought to have something to say to each

other."

But when he came, Professor Hardage was glad to let him find relief

in his monologues--fragments of self-revelation. This last phase

of their friendship had this added significance: that the Judge no

longer spent his Sunday evenings with Mrs. Conyers. The last

social link binding him to womankind had been broken. It was a

final loosening and he felt it, felt the desolation in which it

left him. His cup of life had indeed been drained, and he turned

away from the dregs.

One afternoon Professor Hardage found him sitting with his familiar

Shakespeare on his knees. As he looked up, he stretched out his

hand in eager welcome and said: "Listen once more;" and he read the

great kindling speech of King Henry to his English yeomen on the

eve of battle.

He laid the book aside.

"Of course you have noticed how Shakespeare likes this word

'mettle,' how he likes the _thing_. The word can be seen from afar

over the vast territory of his plays like the same battle-flag set

up in different parts of a field. It is conspicuous in the heroic

English plays, and in the Roman and in the Greek; it waves alike

over comedy and tragedy as a rallying signal to human nature. I

imagine I can see his face as he writes of the mettle of

children--the mettle of a boy--the quick mettle of a schoolboy--a

lad of mettle--the mettle of a gentleman--the mettle of the

sex--the mettle of a woman, Lady Macbeth--the mettle of a king--the

mettle of a speech--even the mettle of a rascal--mettle in death.

I love to think of him, a man who had known trouble, writing the

words: 'The insuppressive mettle of our spirits.'

"But this particular phrase--the mettle of the pasture--belongs

rather to our century than to his, more to Darwin than to the

theatre of that time. What most men are thinking of now, if they

think at all, is of our earth, a small grass-grown planet hung in

space. And, unaccountably making his appearance on it, is man, a

pasturing animal, deriving his mettle from his pasture. The old

question comes newly up to us: Is anything ever added to him? Is

anything ever lost to him? Evolution--is it anything more than

change? Civilizations--are they anything but different

arrangements of the elements of man's nature with reference to the

preeminence of some elements and the subsidence of others?

"Suppose you take the great passions: what new one has been added,

what old one has been lost? Take all the passions you find in

Greek literature, in the Roman. Have you not seen them reappear in

American life in your own generation? I believe I have met them in

my office. You may think I have not seen Paris and Helen, but I

have. And I have seen Orestes and Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and

Oedipus. Do you suppose I have not met Tarquin and Virginia and

Lucretia and Shylock--to come down to nearer times--and seen Lear

and studied Macbeth in the flesh? I knew Juliet once, and behind

locked doors I have talked with Romeo. They are all here in any

American commonwealth at the close of our century: the great

tragedies are numbered--the oldest are the newest. So that

sometimes I fix my eyes only on the old. I see merely the planet

with its middle green belt of pasture and its poles of snow and

ice; and wandering over that green belt for a little while man the

pasturing animal--with the mystery of his ever being there and the

mystery of his dust--with nothing ever added to him, nothing ever

lost out of him--his only power being but the power to vary the

uses of his powers.

"Then there is the other side, the side of the new. I like to

think of the marvels that the pasturing animal has accomplished in

our own country. He has had new thoughts, he has done things never

seen elsewhere or before. But after all the question remains, what

is our characteristic mettle? What is the mettle of the American?

He has had new ideas; but has he developed a new virtue or carried

any old virtue forward to characteristic development? Has he added

to the civilizations of Europe the spectacle of a single virtue

transcendently exercised? We are not braver than other brave

people, we are not more polite, we are not more honest or more

truthful or more sincere or kind. I wish to God that some virtue,

say the virtue of truthfulness, could be known throughout the world

as the unfailing mark of the American--the mettle of his pasture.

Not to lie in business, not to lie in love, not to lie in

religion--to be honest with one's fellow-men, with women, with

God--suppose the rest of mankind would agree that this virtue

constituted the characteristic of the American! That would be fame

for ages.

"I believe that we shall sometime become celebrated for preeminence

in some virtue. Why, I have known young fellows in my office that

I have believed unmatched for some fine trait or noble quality.

You have met them in your classes."

He broke off abruptly and remained silent for a while.

"Have you seen Rowan lately?" he asked, with frank uneasiness: and

receiving the reply which he dreaded, he soon afterward arose and

passed brokenly down the street.

For some weeks now he had been missing Rowan; and this was the

second cause of his restlessness and increasing loneliness. The

failure of Rowan's love affair was a blow to him: it had so linked

him to the life of the young--was the last link. And since then he

had looked for Rowan in vain; he had waited for him of mornings at

his office, had searched for him on the streets, scanning all young

men on horseback or in buggies; had tried to find him in the

library, at the livery stable, at the bank where he was a depositor

and director. There was no ground for actual uneasiness concerning

Rowan's health, for Rowan's neighbors assured him in response to

his inquiries that he was well and at work on the farm.

"If he is in trouble, why does he not come and tell me? Am I not

worth coming to see? Has he not yet understood what he is to me?

But how can he know, how can the young ever know how the old love

them? And the old are too proud to tell." He wrote letters and

tore them up.

As we stand on the rear platform of a train and see the mountains

away from which we are rushing rise and impend as if to overwhelm

us, so in moving farther from his past very rapidly now, it seemed

to follow him as a landscape growing always nearer and clearer.

His mind dwelt more on the years when hatred had so ruined him,

costing him the only woman he had ever asked to be his wife,

costing him a fuller life, greater honors, children to leave behind.

He was sitting alone in his rear office the middle of one

afternoon, alone among his books. He had outspread before him

several that are full of youth. Barbee was away, the street was

very quiet. No one dropped in--perhaps all were tired of hearing

him talk. It was not yet the hour for Professor Hardage to walk

in. A watering-cart creaked slowly past the door and the gush of

the drops of water sounded like a shower and the smell of the dust

was strong. Far away in some direction were heard the cries of

school children at play in the street. A bell was tolling; a green

fly, entering through the rear door, sang loud on the dusty

window-panes and then flew out and alighted on a plant of

nightshade springing up rank at the doorstep.

He was not reading and his thoughts were the same old thoughts. At

length on the quiet air, coming nearer, were heard the easy roll of

wheels and the slow measured step of carriage horses. The sound

caught his ear and he listened with quick eagerness. Then he rose

trembling and waited. The carriage had stopped at the door; a

moment later there was a soft low knock on the lintel and Mrs.

Meredith entered. He met her but she said: "May I go in there?"

and entered the private office.

She brought with her such grace and sweetness of full womanly years

that as she seated herself opposite him and lifted her veil away

from the purity of her face, it was like the revelation of a shrine

and the office became as a place of worship. She lifted the veil

from the dignity and seclusion of her life. She did not speak at

once but looked about her. Many years had passed since she had

entered that office, for it had long ago seemed best to each of

them that they should never meet. He had gone back to his seat at

the desk with the opened books lying about him as though he had

been searching one after another for the lost fountain of youth.

He sat there looking at her, his white hair falling over his

leonine head and neck, over his clear mournful eyes. The sweetness

of his face, the kindness of it, the shy, embarrassed, almost

guilty look on it from the old pain of being misunderstood--the

terrible pathos of it all, she saw these; but whatever her

emotions, she was not a woman to betray them at such a moment, in

such a place.

"I do not come on business," she said. "All the business seems to

have been attended to; life seems very easy, too easy: I have so

little to do. But I am here, Ravenel, and I suppose I must try to

say what brought me."

She waited for some time, unable to speak.

"Ravenel," she said at length, "I cannot go on any longer without

telling you that my great sorrow in life has been the wrong I did

you."

He closed his eyes quickly and stretched out his hand against her,

as though to shut out the vision of things that rose before him--as

though to stop words that would unman him.

"But I was a young girl! And what does a young girl understand

about her duty in things like that? I know it changed your whole

life; you will never know what it has meant in mine."

"Caroline," he said, and he looked at her with brimming eyes, "if

you had married me, I'd have been a great man. I was not great

enough to be great without you. The single road led the wrong

way--to the wrong things!"

"I know," she said, "I know it all. And I know that tears do not

efface mistakes, and that our prayers do not atone for our wrongs."

She suddenly dropped her veil and rose,

"Do not come out to help me," she said as he struggled up also.

He did not wish to go, and he held out his hand and she folded her

soft pure hands about it; then her large noble figure moved to the

side of his and through her veil--her love and sorrow hidden from

him--she lifted her face and kissed him.

V

And during these days when Judge Morris was speaking his mind about

old tragedies that never change, and new virtues--about scandal and

guilt and innocence--it was during these days that the scandal

started and spread and did its work on the boy he loved--and no one

had told him.

The summer was drawing to an end. During the last days of it Kate

wrote to Isabel:

"I could not have believed, dearest friend, that so long a time

would pass without my writing. Since you went away it has been

eternity. And many things have occurred which no one foresaw or

imagined. I cannot tell you how often I have resisted the impulse

to write. Perhaps I should resist now; but there are some matters

which you ought to understand; and I do not believe that any one

else has told you or will tell you. If I, your closest friend,

have shrunk, how could any one else be expected to perform the duty?

"A week or two after you left I understood why you went away

mysteriously, and why during that last visit to me you were unlike

yourself. I did not know then that your gayety was assumed, and

that you were broken-hearted beneath your brave disguises. But I

remember your saying that some day I should know. The whole truth

has come out as to why you broke your engagement with Rowan, and

why you left home. You can form no idea what a sensation the news

produced. For a while nothing else was talked of, and I am glad

for your sake that you were not here.

"I say the truth came out; but even now the town is full of

different stories, and different people believe different things.

But every friend of yours feels perfectly sure that Rowan was

unworthy of you, and that you did right in discarding him. It is

safe to say that he has few friends left among yours. He seldom

comes to town, and I hear that he works on the farm like a common

hand as he should. One day not long after you left I met him on

the street. He was coming straight up to speak to me as usual.

But I had the pleasure of staring him in the eyes and of walking

deliberately past him as though he were a stranger--except that I

gave him one explaining look. I shall never speak to him.

"His mother has the greatest sympathy of every one. They say that

no one has told her the truth: how could any one tell her such

things about her own son? Of course she must know that you dropped

him and that we have all dropped him. They say that she is greatly

saddened and that her health seems to be giving way.

"I do not know whether you have heard the other sensation regarding

the Meredith family. You refused Rowan; and now Dent is going to

marry a common girl in the neighborhood. Of course Dent Meredith

was always noted for being a quiet little bookworm, near-sighted,

and without any knowledge of girls. So it doesn't seem very

unnatural for him to have collected the first specimen that he came

across as he walked about over the country. This marriage which is

to take place in the autumn is the second shock to his mother.

"You will want to hear of other people. And this reminds me that a

few of your friends have turned against you and insist that these

stories about Rowan are false, and even accuse you of starting

them. This brings me to Marguerite.

"Soon after her ball she had typhoid fever. In her delirium of

whom do you suppose she incessantly and pitifully talked? Every

one had supposed that she and Barbee were sweethearts--and had been

for years. But Barbee's name was never on her lips. It was all

Rowan, Rowan, Rowan. Poor child, she chided him for being so cold

to her; and she talked to him about the river of life and about his

starting on the long voyage from the house of his fathers; and

begged to be taken with him, and said that in their family the

women never loved but once. When she grew convalescent, there was

a consultation of the grandmother and the mother and the doctors:

one passion now seemed to constitute all that was left of

Marguerite's life; and that was like a flame burning her strength

away.

"They did as the doctor said had to be done. Mrs. Meredith had

been very kind during her illness, had often been to the house.

They kept from her of course all knowledge of what Marguerite had

disclosed in her delirium. So when Marguerite by imperceptible

degrees grew stronger, Mrs. Meredith begged that she might be moved

out to the country for the change and the coolness and the quiet;

and the doctors availed themselves of this plan as a solution of

their difficulty--to lessen Marguerite's consuming desire by

gratifying it. So she and her mother went out to the Merediths'.

The change proved beneficial. I have not been driving myself,

although the summer has been so long and hot; and during the

afternoons I have so longed to see the cool green lanes with the

sun setting over the fields. But of course people drive a great

deal and they often meet Mrs. Meredith with Marguerite in the

carriage beside her. At first it was Marguerite's mother and

Marguerite. Then it was Mrs. Meredith and Marguerite; and now it

is Rowan and Marguerite. They drive alone and she sits with her

face turned toward him--in open idolatry. She is to stay out there

until she is quite well. How curiously things work around! If he

ever proposes, scandal will make no difference to Marguerite.

"How my letter wanders! But so do my thoughts wander. If you only

knew, while I write these things, how I am really thinking of other

things. But I must go on in my round-about way. What I started

out to say was that when the scandals, I mean the truth, spread

over the town about Rowan, the three Marguerites stood by him. You

could never have believed that the child had such fire and strength

and devotion in her nature. I called on them one day and was

coldly treated simply because I am your closest friend. Marguerite

pointedly expressed her opinion of a woman who deserts a man

because he has his faults. Think of this child's sitting in moral

condemnation upon you!

"The Hardages also--of course you have no stancher friends than

they are--have stood up stubbornly for Rowan. Professor Hardage

became very active in trying to bring the truth out of what he

believes to be gossip and misunderstanding. And Miss Anna has also

remained loyal to him, and in her sunny, common-sense way flouts

the idea of there being any truth in these reports.

"I must not forget to tell you that Judge Morris now spends his

Sunday evenings with Professor Hardage. No one has told him: they

have spared him. Of course every one knows that he was once

engaged to Rowan's mother and that scandal broke the engagement and

separated them for life. Only in his case it was long afterward

found out that the tales were not true.

"I have forgotten Barbee. He and Marguerite had quarrelled before

her illness--no one knows why, unless she was already under the

influence of her fatal infatuation for Rowan. Barbee has gone to

work. A few weeks ago he won his first serious case in court and

attracted attention. They say his speech was so full of dignity

and unnecessary rage that some one declared he was simply trying to

recover his self-esteem for Marguerite's having called him trivial

and not yet altogether grown up.

"Of course you must have had letters of your own, telling you of

the arrival of the Fieldings--Victor's mother and sisters; and the

house is continually gay with suppers and parties.

"How my letter wanders! It is a sick letter, Isabel, a dead

letter. I must not close without going back to the Merediths once

more. People have been driving out to see the little farm and the

curious little house of Dent Meredith's bride elect--a girl called

Pansy Something. It lies near enough to the turnpike to be in full

view--too full view. They say it is like a poultry farm and that

the bride is a kind of American goose girl: it will be a marriage

between geology and the geese. The geese will have the best of it.

"Dearest friend, what shall I tell you of my own life--of my

nights, of the mornings when I wake, of these long, lonesome,

summer afternoons? Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing! I should

rather write to you how, my thoughts go back to the years of our

girlhood together when we were so happy, Isabel, so happy, so

happy! What ideals we formed as to our marriages and our futures!

"KATE.

"P.S.--I meant to tell you that of course I shall do everything in

my power to break up the old friendship between George and Rowan.

Indeed, I have already done it."