thought at first that we were going to the dogs, and, I think, kept up a
kind of watch over our movements. He came in one morning, after he had
concluded his suspicions were wrong, and made a sort of expiatory call.
He tried to tell us how he had judged us too harshly, but couldn't quite
bring himself to it, and, after a good many half-uttered remarks that
did honor to the old gentleman's heart, if they didn't prove him a cool
hand in such matters, he left us with an unspoken blessing and some
homely, sound advice to do as we liked, so long as we were manly and
honest.
"Within a week he was stricken with apoplexy on receiving news of some
serious losses, and was taken home without speaking. He died the next
morning just at sunrise, and Grace and Phil mingled their tears at his
bedside. He tried in vain to speak to them, and the pleased light in his
eyes as they took each other's hands and laid them, joined together, in
his, was the only sign he gave of having known there had been a
difference between them.
"Poor Grace! she was very miserable and lonely after that. Phil could
never bear to be with her after he had spoken. Her true kindness and
gentle, loving pity were misery to him. He made a noble effort to stay
by and watch over her, but he was hardly fit to take care of himself.
She never knew how small a share of what little was left of his father's
money he took with him to the mountains, but she realized why he went
without waiting for his degree, and sadly approved his resolution. She
always kept the growing attachment between her and Herbert from grating
on Phil as much as was in her power, but he could not help seeing it.
Though he never said anything even to me, it was plain that he had a
poor opinion of the young journalist; and Grace was very thankful to him
for all he did and suffered.
"She must have felt very much alone in the world after Phil left, and
the house certainly seemed empty and sad when I used to go there to see
her. There was no one but Grace and the housekeeper and an old
gentleman, a clerk in one of the State departments, to whom she had
rented rooms, partly for the money and partly to have a man in the
house. Herbert was with her whenever his work would permit, and there
was some talk about their intimacy among people who, even if they had
known her, were too base to have appreciated the fineness and truth and
purity of Grace's nature.
"I couldn't blame her for marrying Herbert,--which she did the fall
after I graduated. They certainly were very much in love, and Herbert
had borne himself creditably in every way. No one could have foreseen
that he would turn out so badly; and for a year or more after their
marriage they were as happy as birds in May. Grace was never
light-hearted, as when I first knew her,--no woman of worth and
tenderness would have been,--but still she was happily and sweetly
contented, completely bound up in her husband, thinking almost of
nothing but him, and caring for nothing but his love.
"When I came back from the law-school, I went to see them as soon as I
was settled. They had sold the house, and were living in a rented
cottage out in East Lincoln. Nannie, their baby, was quite if not more
than a year old then; and, though I had known that Grace would be a fond
mother, I was unprepared to see the way in which she seemed absolutely
to worship the child. I immediately asked myself if it meant that she
was not so happy with Herbert as she had been. I met him at tea, to
which Grace insisted on my staying. His dress was as neat and as
carefully arranged as ever, and he was cordial enough toward me; but he
did not kiss Grace when he came in, and hardly looked at the baby. He
laughed a good deal, and told several amusing incidents of his newspaper
experience. I noticed that his old habit of looking at one's chin or
cravat instead of at one's eyes when he spoke to one had grown upon him.
He excused himself soon after tea on the ground of having to be at the
office, and went away smoking a cigarette.
"Grace complained of the way in which his work kept him up nights. He
was never home until after midnight, she said, and sometimes not before
morning. She was afraid it was telling upon his health. 'You must come
and see me often. George.' she said, as she gave me her hand at parting.
'I see very little of my husband now, and, if it were not for Nannie, I
feel as if I should be almost unhappy. Then he would have to do some
other work, though he likes journalism so well.' That was the nearest
she ever came to complaining to me, though I soon knew that she had
plenty of cause. She was not entirely deceived by Herbert's assertions
and excuses. I learned before long, for I made a point of finding out,
that he was never obliged to be at the office after nine o'clock, that
he gambled and drank, and was looked on with unpleasant suspicions by
his employers, so that he might at any time find himself without a
position. He owned no property, and Grace's little patrimony had
disappeared, even to the money they had received for the house, without
leaving the slightest trace. Herbert's ill reputation was common
property in the town, and he and Grace went nowhere together. She had
even given up going to church, that she might be with him for a few
hours on Sundays; and now and then if he took her for a walk and pushed
the baby-carriage through the Capitol-grounds for an hour, she cared
more for it than for a whole stack of Mr. Gittner's sermons. She had no
friends at all, and but few acquaintances, and altogether had much to
bear up under. Right nobly she did it, too; never a word of complaint to
any one: I believe not even to herself would she admit that she was
treated basely.
"They kept on in this way for a year after I opened my office. I heard
from Phil now and then,--brief notes that he was alive and well,--and on
the 11th of June, the date of the old captain's death, Grace always
received a long letter from him, full of references to their childhood,
but telling little of himself. Herbert's reputation became worse and
worse, and he deserved all the evil that was said of him. The tradesmen
refused him credit, and the carpets and furniture of their little
cottage grew old and thread-bare and were not replaced. I have seen him
play pool at Sudden's for half a day at a dollar a game, and perhaps
lose his week's wages. He was hand in glove with the set that lurked
about the 'club-room' over the saloon, and almost any night could be
seen at the faro-table fingering his chips and checking off the cards on
his tally-sheet. Nobody but strangers would sit down to a game of poker
or casino with him: he had grown much too skilful. He was what they
called a 'very smooth player:' though I never heard of his being openly
accused of cheating.
"One of my first cases of consequence was to recover some money which
had been paid to some sharpers by an innocent young fellow from the East
for a worthless mine in Colorado. In connection with it I went to
Denver. Charlie Wayland, a brother of the chemistry professor, happened
to be on the same train. He owns the planing-mill down on Sixth Street
now, you know; but he was a wild young fellow then, and knew everything
that was going on. He intended to have a time, he said, while he was in
Denver; that was what he was going for. He went with me to the St.
James, where I had written Phil to meet me, if he could come down from
Boulder.
"Young Wayland had his time in the city, and I had finished my business
and was going to start back and leave him to enjoy by himself his trip
to Pike's Peak and the other sights of the State, considerably
disappointed at not having seen Phil, when he came in on us as I was
packing my grip-sack. He was rough and hardy as a bear, and had grown a
tremendous black beard: his heavy hand closed over mine till my knuckles
cracked. We were glad enough to see each other, and had plenty to talk
about. Of course I stayed over another day, and Wayland put off his trip
to Pike's Peak to keep us company, though we didn't care so much for his
presence as he seemed to think we did. But he gave us a little dinner at
Charpiot's, and I forgave his talkativeness for the sake of the
champagne, until he became excited by drinking too much of it and began
to talk about George Herbert. He was stating his system of morality,
which was, in effect,--and Charlie had acted up to it pretty well,--that
a fellow should go it when he was young, but when he was married he
ought to settle down.
"'Now, I can't stand a fellow like that Herbert,' he said; and for all
my kicks under the table he went on, 'It may be well enough for the
French, but I say in this country it's a devilish shame. He is a young
fellow in Lincoln, Mr. Kendall,--got a splendid wife, and a little baby,
one of the nicest women in the world, and thinks the world of him, and
he goes it with the boys as if he was one of 'em. He never goes home,
though, unless he is sober enough to keep himself straight; but I've
seen him bowling full many a time. Wine, women, and song, you know, and
all that; it may be well enough for us young bloods, but in a fellow of
his circumstances I say it's wrong, damn it! and he oughtn't to do it.'
"Now, I had told Phil that Grace was well and fairly happy. I had
thought it but just to sink my opinion and give Grace's own account of
herself and deliver her simple message without comment. 'Give Phil my
love,' she had said as I left her the night before I came away.
"'And how does this Herbert's wife take all this?' asked Phil of
Wayland.
"'Oh, she doesn't know all, I suppose. If she did, it would probably
kill her. My brother's wife says that if it were not for her child she
doesn't believe Mrs. Herbert would live very long, as it is.'
"'Her trouble is common talk, then?' observed Phil, sipping his wine and
avoiding my eyes.
"'Why, yes, to a certain extent; though she doesn't parade it, by any
means. In fact, she lives very much alone; no one ever sees her, hardly,
but George here, who is an old friend, you know. Maybe you used to know
her,' he added suddenly, coming to himself a little. 'Well, if you did,'
he went on, as Phil did not answer, 'you wouldn't know her now, they
say, for the lively, careless girl she was five or six years ago.' And
then he began to talk about the condition of the Chinese in Denver, and
how he had that morning seen one of them kicked off the sidewalk without
having given the least provocation.
"Phil said nothing further about the Herberts all evening, but just
before we separated for the night he asked me if I could let him have
some money. I unsuspectingly thanked my stars that I could, and told him
so.
"'Well, then,' he declared, 'I am going back to Lincoln with you
to-morrow.' And, in spite of all I could say, he did. He had his beard
shaved off, bought himself some civilized clothes, and made his
appearance with me on the streets of Lincoln as naturally as if he had
gone away but the day before. His life in the mountains had given him an
air of decision, a certain quiet energy and determination which
impressed one immediately with the sense of his being a man of strong
character, with a powerful will under perfect control. I grew to have so
much confidence in him that I thought his coming would somehow be a
benefit to Grace, though I could not see how; in fact, when I tried to
reason about it, I told myself exactly the contrary. But Phil seemed to
have such implicit confidence in himself, to be so self-sufficient and
so ready for any emergency, and altogether such a perfect man of action,
that he inspired belief and confidence in others.
"We met Herbert on our way up from the station: he was standing in front
of the 'Gazette' office, laughing and talking with Sudden's barkeeper.
He greeted Phil with cordiality, in spite of the latter's distant
bearing, and told him Grace would be greatly pleased at his arrival.
"'I suppose she will be glad to see me,' said Phil, as we passed on. And
she was glad, very glad, to see him, but she was far from being made
happy by his coming. I sent a note out to her, and Phil and I followed
shortly after. I did not watch their meeting,--I thought, somehow, that
no one ought to see it,--but I knew he took her in his arms; and when
she came out on the porch to bring me in there were tears in her eyes.
"We all sat and talked for a long while, Grace with her hand in Phil's
and her eyes on his face, when she was not looking anxiously after my
awkward attempts at caring for her baby; for of course Nannie had been
brought out almost the first thing. I think, from the way in which she
carefully avoided asking him his reasons for coming back, that she
divined what they were. I imagined that she blamed me as being the prime
cause; but there was nothing I could say to undeceive her. In fact, I
thought it better for her to believe so than to know the truth.
"'She is miserably unhappy, George,' said Phil gloomily, as we walked
away. 'But you were right not to tell me. I can do nothing to help her:
I cannot even openly sympathize with her. It would have been better to
have kept on thinking she was happy: there was a bitter kind of
satisfaction to me in that, but still it was a satisfaction.'
"Nevertheless Phil did not go back to the mountains. He stayed on here
for a month or more, dividing his time pretty equally between my office
and Grace's little parlor. He very seldom met Herbert. Now and then they
would be together at the cottage for half an hour, if Herbert happened
to come home while he was there, and when they met on the street they
would merely pass the time of day.
"One evening before going to supper I waited until after seven o'clock
for Phil to come in, and just as I had given him up, and was starting
away alone, he entered the office, looking pale as a ghost, and
evidently in great distress of spirit.
"'For God's sake, Phil, what is the matter?' I exclaimed, as he sank
upon the sofa and covered his face with his hands.
"'Go away, George: go away and leave me,' was all he said; then he got
up and began walking violently up and down the room. At last he came
near me and put his hand on my shoulder. 'I've killed her, George, I am
afraid; At least I have killed him right before her eyes, and she may
never get over it. I didn't mean to, George, you know that; but he came
home drunk, and I had gone to bid Grace good-by,--for I had made up my
mind, George, to leave to-morrow,--and he came in. We had been talking
of father, and Grace was very sad and wretched, and there were tears in
her eyes when she kissed me, just as he came in and saw us. She was
frightened at his brutality, and clung to me in terror, when he began
swearing in a torrent of passion and calling her the vilest of names. He
struck at us with his cane. If he had struck me he might yet have been
alive; but when I saw the great red welt on Grace's neck and heard her
cry out, I was wild, George. For an instant, I believe, I could have
stamped him into bits, and if it had been my last act on earth I could
not have helped striking him.'
"While he spoke, Phil stood with his hand on my shoulder, looking into
my eyes, as if he wanted me to judge him, as if he would read in my very
look whether I blamed him or not. I took his hand.
"'I thought you would understand,' he went on. 'I did not know I was
going to kill him, but I think I tried to: I struck him with all my
might, Grace threw herself between us and begged me not to hurt him
after he had fallen down, and took hold of my arm as if to hold me. But
when she saw the blood running from his temple, where he had struck it
on the window-sill, and how still and motionless he lay, she tried to go
to him, but could not for weakness and fainting. I carried her into Mrs.
Stanley's, and have not seen her since, but the doctor says she is very
ill. Herbert was dead when they went into the room after I told them
what had happened; and I suppose I had better give myself up to the
law.'
"You can have no idea how I felt to see my dearest friend in such a
position. And poor Grace!--it was much worse for her. I thought with
Phil that she might never survive the shock and misery of it all. But
she did, and came out, weak and broken down as she was, to give her
testimony at Phil's trial. We had no trouble in getting a jury to acquit
him, and he went back to Colorado without bidding Grace good-by,
although she would have seen him and was even anxious to do so. Some
persons here, mostly women, pretended to think that there had been more
cause for Herbert's jealousy than was generally supposed; but they
belonged to the sanctimonious, hypocritical custom-worshippers. All
really good people remembered what Herbert had been, and refused to see
in him a martyr or even a wronged man.
"After that Grace supported herself by dress-making and teaching music;
and some two years ago, when we heard that Phil had been killed by a
mine's caving in, and that he had left a little fortune to her and
Nannie, I, as his executor and her friend, induced her to take and use
it,--which she did, with simplicity and thankfulness and with her heart
full of pity and love for poor Phil. Yes, poor Phil! those five or six
years must have been full of misery to him, and he was probably thankful
when the end came. We never heard from him until after his death. There
was a letter that came to me with the will, that had been written long
before. None but they two know what was in it; and I, for one, do not
want to inquire."
George sat for a long while in silence, looking at the glowing coals in
the huge reservoir stove. Neither Perry nor I cared to interrupt his
revery. At last he roused himself.
"Well, boys," he said, "it is late: I think we had better go. It is all
over now, and life has gone on calmly for years. Other people have
forgotten that there ever were such persons as Phil or Herbert."
When Perry and I reached our room we found it was almost three o'clock.
George had walked with us to the door, and very little had been said
between us. I took a cigarette and lay down on the bed. "Perry," I said,
as he was lighting the gas.
"Sur to you," he answered, in a way he had of imitating a certain
barkeeper of our acquaintance.
"What do you think of George?"
"You know what I think of him as well as I do."
"Yes; but I mean in connection with this that he has told us."
"I think he acted just like himself all the way through."
"Don't you think he has been in love with Mrs. Herbert from the first?"
"Am I in the habit of imagining such nonsense?"
"You may think it nonsense," I answered, with the quiet fervor of
conviction, "but I am sure it is nothing but the real state of the
case."
"Bosh!" exclaimed Perry, throwing his boots into a corner; and therewith
the discussion closed.
About a week ago I had a letter from him, though, in which he recalled
this circumstance and acknowledged that I had been in the right. "They
are going to be married in the fall," he wrote. "I hope they may be
happy, and I suppose they will be; but I don't think Mrs. Herbert ought
to marry him unless she loves him; and I am fearful that she only thinks
to reward long years of faithful affection. George deserves more than
that." This was a good deal for Perry to manage to say. He usually keeps
as far away from such subjects as he well can,--which is partly the
reason, I think, that his opinion thereon is not greatly to be trusted.
As for me, I am sure George's wife will love him as much as he
deserves,--though this is almost an infinite amount,--and that she has
not been far from loving him from the beginning. I have bought a pair of
vases to send them; and I expect that Miss Lucretia Knowles will say,
when she learns how much they cost, that I was very extravagant. Not
that Lu is close or stingy at all; but she has promised to wait until I
have made a start in life, and is naturally impatient for me to get on
as rapidly as possible.
FRANK PARKE.
THE WOOD-THRUSH AT SUNSET.
Lover of solitude,
Poet and priest of nature's mysteries,
If but a step intrude,
Thy oracle is mute, thy music dies.
Oft have I lightly wooed
Sweet Poesy to give me pause of pain,
Oft in her singing mood
Sought to surprise her haunt, and sought in vain.
And thou art shy as she,
But mortal, or I had not found thy shrine,
To listen breathlessly
If I may make thy hoarded secret mine.
Thy tender mottled breast,
Dappled the color of our primal sod,
Now quick and song-possessed,
Doth seem to hold the very joy of God,--
Joy hid from mortal quest
Of bosky loves on silver-moonéd eves,
And the high-hearted best
That swells thy throat with joy among the leaves.
Like the Muezzin's call
From some high minaret when day is done,
Among the beeches tall
Thy voice proclaims, "There is no God but one."
And but one Beauty, too,
Of whose sweet synthesis we ever fail:
She flies if we pursue,
Like thy swift wing down some dim intervale.
For thou art lightly gone;
Gone is the flute-like note, the yearning strain,
And all the air forlorn
Is breathless till it hear thy voice again.
But thou wilt not return;
Thou hast the secret of thy joy to keep,
And other hearts must learn
Thy tuneful message, ere the world may sleep,--
Sleep lulled by many a dream
Of sylvan sounds that woo the ear in vain,
While still thy numbers seem
To voice the pain of bliss, the bliss of pain.
MARY C. PECKHAM.
A FOREST BEAUTY.
Last spring, or possibly it was early in June, I was walking, in company
with an intelligent farmer, through a bit of heavy forest that bordered
some fields of corn and wheat, when a golden, flame-like gleam from the
midst of the last year's leaves and twigs on the ground at my feet
attracted my sight. I stooped and picked up a large fragment of a flower
of the _Liriodendron Tulipifera_ which had been let fall by some
foraging squirrel from the dark-green and fragrant top of the giant tree
nearest us. Strange to say, my farmer friend, who owned the rich Indiana
soil in which the tree grew, did not know, until I told him, that the
"poplar," as he called the tulip-tree, bears flowers. For twenty years
he had owned this farm, during which time he had cut down acres of
forest for rails and lumber, without ever having discovered the gorgeous
blossom which to me is the finest mass of form and color to be seen in
our American woods. As I had a commission from an artist to procure a
spray of these blooms for her, I at once began to search the tree-top
with my eyes. The bole, or stem, rose sixty feet, tapering but slightly,
to where some heavy and gnarled limbs put forth, their extremities lost
in masses of peculiarly dark, rich foliage. At first I could distinguish
no flowers, but at length here and there a suppressed glow of orange
shot with a redder tinge showed through the dusky gloom of the leaves.
Lo! there they were, hundreds of them, over three inches in diameter,
bold, gaudy, rich, the best possible examples of nature's pristine
exuberance of force and color. Two gray squirrels were frisking about
among the highest sprays, and it was my good fortune that my friend
carried on his shoulder a forty-four-calibre rifle; for, though it was
death to the nimble little animals, it proved to be the instrument with
which I procured my coveted flowers. It suggested the probability that,
if bullets could fetch down squirrels from that tree-top, they might
also serve to clip off and let fall some of the finest clusters or
sprays of tulip. The experiment was tried, with excellent result. I made
the little artist glad with some of the grandest specimens I have ever
seen.