IV

"Well, here goes!" said Jane, half aloud, with her foot on the lowest of

the glistening granite steps. The steps led up to the ponderous pillared

arches of a grandiose and massive porch; above the porch a sturdy and

rugged balustrade half intercepted the rough faced glitter of a vast and

variegated façade; and higher still the morning sun shattered its beams

over a tumult of angular roofs and towering chimneys.

"It _is_ swell, I declare!" said Jane, with her eye on the wrought-iron

work of the outer doors and the jewels and bevels of the inner-ones.

"Where is the thing-a-ma-jig, anyway?" she inquired of herself. She was

searching for the doorbell, and she fell back on her own rustic lingo in

order to ward off the incipient panic caused by this overwhelming

splendor. "Oh, here it is! There!" She gave a push. "And now I'm in for

it." She had decided to take the richest and best-known and most

fashionable woman on her list so start with; the worst over at the

beginning, she thought, the rest would follow easily enough.

"I suppose the 'maid' will wear a cap and a silver tray," she observed

further. "Or will it be a gold one, with diamonds around the edge?"

The door-knob turned from within. "Is Mrs. Bates--" she began.

The door opened half way. A grave, smooth-shaven man appeared; his chin

and upper lip had the mottled smudge that shows in so many of those

conscientious portraits of the olden time.

"Gracious me!" said the startled Jane to herself. She dropped

her disconcerted vision to the door-mat. Then she saw that the

man wore knee-breeches and black silk stockings.

"Heaven be merciful!" was her inward cry. "It's a footman, as I live.

I've been reading about them all my life, and now I've met one. But I

never suspected that there was really anything of the kind in _this_

town!"

She left the contemplation of the servant's pumps and stockings, and

began to grapple fiercely with the catch of her hand-bag.

The man, in the meanwhile, studied her with a searching gravity, and, as

it seemed, with some disapproval. The splendor of the front that his

master presented to the world had indeed intimidated poor Jane; but there

were many others upon whom it had no deterring effect at all. Some of

these brought art-books in monthly parts; others brought polish for the

piano legs. Many of them were quite as prepossessing in appearance as

Jane was; some of them were much less plain and dowdy; few of them

were so recklessly indiscreet as to betray themselves at the threshold

by exhibiting a black leather bag.

"There!" remarked Jane to the footman, "I knew I should get at it

eventually." She smiled at him with a friendly good-will; she

acknowledged him as a human being, and she hoped to propitiate him into

the concession that she herself was nothing less.

The man took her card, which was fortunately as correct as the most

discreet and contemporaneous stationer could fashion. He decided that he

was running no risk with his mistress, and "Miss Jane Marshall" was

permitted to pass the gate.

She was ushered into a small reception-room. The hard-wood floor was

partly covered by a meagre Persian rug. There was a plain sofa full of

forbidding angles, and a scantily upholstered chair which insisted upon

nobody's remaining longer than necessary. But through the narrow door

Jane caught branching vistas of room after room heaped up with the

pillage of a sacked and ravaged globe, and of a stairway which led with a

wide sweep to regions of unimaginable glories above.

"Did you ever!" exclaimed Jane. It was of the footman that she was

speaking; he, in fact, loomed up to the practical eclipse of all this

luxury and display. "Only eighty years from the Massacre, and hardly

eight hundred feet from the Monument!"

Presently she heard a tapping and a rustling without. She thought that

she might lean a few inches to one side with no risk of being detected in

an impropriety, and she was rewarded by seeing the splendid vacuity of

the grand stairway finally filled--filled more completely, more amply,

than she could have imagined possible through the passage of one person

merely. A woman of fifty or more was descending with a slow and somewhat

ponderous stateliness. She wore an elaborate morning gown with a broad

plait down the back, and an immensity of superfluous material in the

sleeves. Her person was broad, her bosom ample, and her voluminous gray

hair was tossed and fretted about the temples after the fashion of a

marquise of the old régime. Jane set her jaw and clamped her knotty

fingers to the two edges of her inhospitable chair.

"I don't care if she _is_ so rich," she muttered, "and so famous and so

fashionable and so terribly handsome; she can't bear _me_ down."

The woman reached the bottom step, and took a turn that for a moment

carried her out of sight. At the same time the sound of her footsteps was

silenced by one of the big rugs that covered the floor of the wide and

roomy hall. But Jane had had a glimpse, and she knew with whom she was to

deal--with one of the big, the broad, the great, the triumphant; with one

of a Roman amplitude and vigor, an Indian keenness and sagacity, an

American ambition and determination; with one who baffles circumstance

and almost masters fate--with one of the conquerors, in short.

"I don't hear her," thought the expectant girl, in some trepidation;

"but, all the same, she's got to cross that bare space just outside the

door before--yes, there's her step! And here she is herself!"

Mrs. Bates appeared in the doorway. She had a strong nose of the lofty

Roman type; her bosom heaved with breaths deep, but quiet and regular.

She had a pair of large, full blue eyes, and these she now fixed on Jane

with an expression of rather cold questioning.

"Miss Marshall?" Her voice was firm, smooth, even, rich, deep. She

advanced a foot or two within the room and remained standing there.

"Yes," responded Jane, in unnecessary corroboration. She rose

mechanically from her meagre chair. "I have come to see you," she began,

awkwardly, "about a charity that I am interested in--no, not exactly a

charity, but--"

At the ominous word "charity" Mrs. Bates's eyes took on a still colder

gleam. She faced poor Jane with the broad, even, pitiless glare of a

chilled-steel mirror.

"Really," she began, "I have a great many demands of this kind made on

me; a great many--more than might generally be imagined." She showed none

of the embarrassed evasion peculiar to the woman on whom such

requisitions are made but at infrequent intervals; she employed the

decisive, business-like tone of a woman of whom such requests are made

daily. Jane seemed to see negation coldly crystallizing before her eyes,

and she gave a mortified groan to find herself drawn so near to the

brink of humiliation. She had never begged before, and she registered an

inward vow never to beg again.

"You don't know _me_ from Adam," she blurted out, at her bluntest and

crudest, "but you must know my aunt, Mrs. Rhodes. I have heard her speak

of you very often. She met you at St. Augustine, last winter."

"Mrs. Rhodes?" the other repeated, doubtfully. She made her eyebrows take

their part in an inquiring glance, and bestowed the result upon her

caller.

"Yes," insisted Jane; "Mrs. A. L. Rhodes. She lives on Michigan--near

Thirtieth."

"Mrs. Rhodes?"--again thoughtfully repeated. She seemed to move her head

in doubt. "I _do_ go to Florida every winter, and sometimes, on the way

to our place, I stop for a day or two at St. Augustine--yes."

She looked at Jane again, as if to say, "That is really the best I can do

for you."

"She played backgammon with you there," Jane still persisted--"on the

hotel veranda. I've heard her say so twenty times."

Mrs. Bates did not change her expression. "Backgammon? Yes, I am very

fond of backgammon; I play it a great deal. Mr. Bates keeps a board in

the car especially for me. I'm always glad to meet anybody who cares to

play; and it's pleasant, I'm sure, to be on easy terms with one's

fellow-travellers."

She laid one hand in the other and gave an imperceptible sigh; she wore a

great many rings. "What more can I say for you than that?"--such seemed

to be the meaning of the expression now on her face.

"My father"--began Jane; she was loud, slow, deliberate, emphatic. What

could the woman mean by receiving her in such a fashion? Were the

Marshalls mere upstarts, nobodies, newcomers, that they must be snubbed

and turned aside in any such way as this? Jane's eyes blinked and her

nostrils quivered. "My father," she began again, in the same tone, "is

David Marshall. He is very well known, I believe, in Chicago. We have

lived here a great many years. It seems to me that there ought to--"

"David Marshall?" repeated Mrs. Bates, gently. "Ah, I _do_ know David

Marshall--yes," she said; "or did--a good many years ago." She looked up

into Jane's face now with a completely altered expression. Her glance was

curious and searching, but it was very kindly. "And you are David

Marshall's daughter?" She smiled indulgently at Jane's outburst of spunk.

"Really--David Marshall's daughter?"

"Yes," answered Jane, with a gruff brevity. She was far from ready to be

placated yet.

"David Marshall's daughter! Then, my dear child, why not have said so in

the first place, without lugging in everybody and everything else you

could think of? Hasn't your father ever spoken of me? And how is he,

anyway? I haven't seen him--to really speak to him--for fifteen years. It

may be even more."

She seemed to have laid hands on a heavy bar, to have wrenched it from

its holds, to have flung it aside from the footpath, and to be inviting

Jane to advance without let or hindrance.

But Jane stood there with pique in her breast, and her long thin arms

laid rigid against her sides. "Let her 'dear child' me, if she wants to;

she sha'n't bring me around in any such way as that."

All this, however, availed little against Mrs. Bates's new manner. The

citadel so closely sealed to charity was throwing itself wide open to

memory. The drawbridge was lowered, and the late enemy was invited to

advance as a friend.

Nay, urged. Mrs. Bates presently seized Jane's unwilling hands. She

gathered those poor, stiff, knotted fingers into two crackling bundles

within her own plump and warm palms, squeezed them forcibly, and looked

into Jane's face with all imaginable kindness. "I had just that temper

once myself," she said.

The sluice-gates of caution and reserve were opening wide; the streams of

tenderness and sympathy were bubbling and fretting to take their course.

"And your father is well? And you are living in the same old place? Oh,

this terrible town! You can't keep your old friends; you can hardly know

your new ones. We are only a mile or two apart, and yet it is the same as

if it were a hundred."

Jane yielded up her hands half unwillingly. She could not, in spite of

herself, remain completely unrelenting, but she was determined not to

permit herself to be patronized. "Yes, we live in the same old place. And

in the same old way," she added--in the spirit of concession.

Mrs. Bates studied her face intently. "Do you look like him--like your

father?"

"No," answered Jane. "Not so very much. Nor like any of the rest of the

family." The statue was beginning to melt. "I'm unique." And another drop

fell.

"Don't slander yourself," She tapped Jane lightly on the shoulder.

Jane looked at her with a protesting, or at least a questioning,

seriousness. It had the usual effect of a wild stare. "I wasn't meaning

to," she said, shortly, and began to congeal again. She also shrugged her

shoulder; she was not quite ready yet to be tapped and patted.

"But don't remain standing, child," Mrs. Bates proceeded, genially. She

motioned Jane back to her chair, and herself advanced to the roomier

sofa. "Or, no; this little pen is like a refrigerator to-day; it's so

hard, every fall, to get the steam heat running as it should. Come; it

ought to be warmer in the music-room.

"The fact is," she proceeded, as they passed through the hall, "that I

have a spare hour on my hands this morning--the first in a month. My

music-teacher has just sent word that she is down with a cold. You shall

have as much of that hour as you wish. So tell me all about your plans; I

dare say I can scrape together a few pennies for Jane Marshall."

"Her music-teacher!" thought Jane. She was not yet so far appeased nor so

far forgetful of her own initial awkwardness as to refrain from searching

out the joints in the other's armor. "What does a woman of fifty-five

want to be taking music-lessons for?"

The music-room was a lofty and spacious apartment done completely in

hard-woods; its panelled walls and ceiling rang with a magnificent

sonority as the two pairs of feet moved across the mirror-like marquetry

of the floor.

To one side stood a concert-grand; its case was so unique and so

luxurious that even Jane was conscious of its having been made by special

order and from a special design. Close at hand stood a tall music-stand

in style to correspond. It was laden with handsomely bound scores of all

the German classics and the usual operas of the French and Italian

schools. These were all ranged in precise order; nothing there seemed to

have been disturbed for a year past. "My! isn't it grand!" sighed Jane.

She already felt herself succumbing beneath these accumulated splendors.

Mrs. Bates carelessly seated herself on the piano-stool, with her back to

the instrument. "I don't suppose," she observed, casually, "that I have

sat down here for a month."

"What!" cried Jane, with a stare. "If I had such a lovely room as this I

should play in it every day."

"Dear me," rejoined Mrs. Bates, "what pleasure could I get from

practising in this great barn of a place, that isn't half full until

you've got seventy or eighty people in it? Or on this big sprawling

thing?"--thrusting out her elbow backward towards the shimmering cover of

the key-board.

"So then," said Jane to herself, "it's all for show. I knew it was. I

don't believe she can play a single note."

"What do you suppose happened to me last winter?" Mrs. Bates went on. "I

had the greatest setback of my life. I asked to join the Amateur Musical

Club. They wouldn't let me in."

"Why not?"

"Well, I played before their committee, and then the secretary wrote me a

note. It was a nice enough note, of course, but I knew what it meant. I

see now well enough that my fingers were rather stiffer than I realized,

and that my 'Twinkling Sprays' and 'Fluttering Zephyrs' were not quite up

to date. They wanted Grieg and Lassen and Chopin. 'Very well,' said I,

'just wait.' Now, I never knuckle under. I never give up. So I sent

right out for a teacher. I practised scales an hour a day for weeks and

months. Granger thought I was going crazy. I tackled Grieg and Lassen and

Chopin--yes, and Tschaikowsky, too. I'm going to play for that committee

next month. Let me see if they'll dare to vote me out again!"

"Oh, _that's_ it!" thought Jane. She was beginning to feel desirous

of meting out exact and even handed justice. She found it impossible to

withhold respect from so much grit and determination.

"But your father liked those old-time things, and so did all the other

young men." Mrs. Bates creased and folded the end of one of her long

sleeves, and seemed lapsing into a retrospective mood. "Why, some

evenings they used to sit two deep around the room to hear me do the

'Battle of Prague.' Do you know the 'Java March'?" she asked, suddenly.

"I'm afraid not," Jane was obliged to confess.

"You father always had a great fondness for that. I don't know," she went

on, after a short pause, "whether you understand that your father was one

of my old beaux--at least, I always counted him with the rest. I was a

gay girl in my day, and I wanted to make the list as long as I could; so

I counted in the quiet ones as well as the noisy ones. Your father was

one of the quiet ones."

"So I should have imagined," said Jane. Her maiden delicacy was just a

shade affrighted at the turn the talk was taking.

"When I was playing he would sit there by the hour and never say a word.

My banner piece was really a fantasia on 'Sonnambula'--a new thing here;

I was the first one in town to have it. There were thirteen pages, and

there was always a rush to see who should turn them. Your father didn't

often enter the rush, but I really liked his way of turning the best of

any. He never turned too soon or too late; he never bothered me by

shifting his feet every second or two, nor by talking to me at the hard

places. In fact, he was the only one who could do it right."

"Yes," said Jane, with an appreciative sigh; "that's pa--all over."

Mrs. Bates was twisting her long sleeves around her wrists. Presently she

shivered slightly. "Well, really," she said, "I don't see that this place

is much warmer than the other; let's try the library."

In this room our antique and Spartan Jane was made to feel the need of

yet stronger props to hold her up against the overbearing weight of

latter-day magnificence. She found herself surrounded now by a sombre and

solid splendor. Stamped hangings of Cordova leather lined the walls,

around whose bases ran a low range of ornate bookcases, constructed with

the utmost taste and skill of the cabinet-maker's art. In the centre of

the room a wide and substantial table was set with all the paraphernalia

of correspondence, and the leathery abysses of three or four vast

easy-chairs invited the reader to bookish self-abandonment.

"How glorious!" cried Jane, as her eyes ranged over the ranks and rows of

formal and costly bindings. It all seemed doubly glorious after that poor

sole bookcase of theirs at home--a huge black-walnut thing like a

wardrobe, with a couple of drawers at the bottom, receptacles that seemed

less adapted to pamphlets than to goloshes. "How grand!" Jane was not

exigent as regarded music, but her whole being went forth towards books.

"Dickens and Thackeray and Bulwer; and Hume and Gibbon, and Johnson's

_Lives of the Poets_, and--"

"And twenty or thirty yards of Scott," Mrs. Bates broke in, genially;

"and enough Encyclopaedia Britannica to reach around the corner and back

again. Sets--sets--sets."

"What a lovely chair to sit and study in!" cried Jane, not at all abashed

by her hostess's comments. "What a grand table to sit and write papers

at!" Writing papers was one of Jane's chief interests.

"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Bates, with a quiet toleration, as she glanced

towards the shining inkstand and the immaculate blotting-pad. "But,

really, I don't suppose I've written two lines at that table since it was

put there. And as for all these books, Heaven only knows where the keys

are to get at them with. I can't do anything with them; why, some of them

weigh five or six pounds!"

Jane shrivelled and shivered under this. She regretted doubly that she

had been betrayed into such an unstinted expression of her honest

interest. "All for show and display," she muttered, as she bowed her head

to search out new titles; "bought by the pound and stacked by the cord;

doing nobody any good--their owners least of all." She resolved to admire

openly nothing more whatever.

Mrs. Bates sank into one of the big chairs and motioned Jane towards

another. "Your father was a great reader," she said, with a resumption of

her retrospective expression. "He was very fond of books--especially

poetry. He often read aloud to me; when he thought I was likely to be

alone, he would bring his Shakespeare over. I believe I could give you

even now, if I was put to it, Antony's address to the Romans. Yes; and

almost all of Hamlet's soliloquies, too."

Jane was preparing to make a stand against this woman, and here,

apparently, was the opportunity. "Do you mean to tell me," she inquired,

with something approaching sternness, "that my father--_my father_--was

ever fond of poetry and--and music, and--and all that sort of thing?"

"Certainly. Why not? I remember your father as a high-minded young man,

with a great deal of good taste; I always thought him much above the

average. And that Shakespeare of his--I recall it perfectly. It was a

chubby little book bound in brown leather, with an embossed stamp, and

print a great deal too fine for _my eyes_. _He_ always had to do the

reading; and he read very pleasantly." She scanned Jane closely. "Perhaps

you have never done your father justice."

Jane felt herself driven to defence--even to apology. "The fact is," she

said, "pa is so quiet; he never says much of anything. I'm about the only

one of the family who knows him very well, and I guess I don't know him

any too well." She felt, though, that Mrs. Bates had no right to defend

her father against his own daughter; no, nor any need.

"I suppose so," said Mrs. Bates, slowly. She crossed over to the radiator

and began working at the valve. "I _told_ Granger I knew he'd be sorry if

he didn't put in furnace-flues too. I really can't ask you to take your

things off down here; let's go upstairs--that's the only warm place I can

think of."

She paused in the hall. "Wouldn't you like to see the rest of the rooms

before you go up?"

"Yes--I don't mind," responded Jane. She was determined to encourage no

ostentatious pride; so she made her acceptance as indifferent as she felt

good manners would allow.

Mrs. Bates crossed over the hall and paused in a wide doorway. "This,"

she indicated, in a tone slightly suggestive of the cicerone, "is

the--well, the Grand Salon; at least, that's what the newspapers have

decided to call it. Do you care anything for Louis Quinze?"

Jane found herself on the threshold of a long and glittering apartment;

it was full of the ornate and complicated embellishments of the

eighteenth century--an exhibition of decorative whip-cracking. Grilles,

panels, mirror-frames all glimmered in green and gold, and a row of

lustres, each multitudinously candled, hung from the lofty ceiling.

Jane felt herself on firmer ground here than in the library, whose

general air of distinction, with no definite detail by way of guidepost,

had rather baffled her.

"Hem!" she observed, critically, as her eyes roamed over the spacious

spendor of the place, "quite an epitome of the whole rococo period; done,

too, with a French grace and a German thoroughness. Almost a real

_jardin d'hiver_, in fact. Very handsome indeed."

Mrs. Bates pricked up her ears; she had not expected quite such a

response as this. "You are posted on these things, then?"

"Well," said Jane, "I belong to an art class. We study the different

periods in architecture and decoration."

"Do you? I belong to just such a class myself--and to three or four

others. I'm studying and learning right along; I never want to stand

still. You were surprised, I saw, about my music-lessons: It _is_ a

little singular, I admit--my beginning as a teacher and ending as a

pupil. You know, of course, that I _was_ a school-teacher? Yes, I had a

little class down on Wabash Avenue near Hubbard Court, in a church

basement. I began to be useful as early as I could. We lived in a little

bit of a house a couple of blocks north of there; you know those

old-fashioned frame cottages--one of them. In the early days pa was a

carpenter--a boss-carpenter, to do him full justice; the town was

growing, and after a while he began to do first-rate. But at the

beginning ma did her own work, and I helped her. I swept and dusted, and

wiped the dishes. She taught me to sew, too; I trimmed all my own hats

till long after I was married."

Mrs. Bates leaned carelessly against the tortured framework of a

tapestried _causeuse_. The light from the lofty windows shattered on the

prisms of her glittering chandeliers and diffused itself over the

panelled loves and graces around her.

"When I got to be eighteen I thought I was old enough to branch out and

do something for myself--I've always tried to hold up my own end. My

little school went first-rate. There was only one drawback--another

school next door, full of great, rowdy boys. They would climb the fence

and make faces at my scholars; yes, and sometimes they would throw

stones. But that wasn't the worst: the other school taught book-keeping.

Now, I never was one of the kind to lag behind, and I used to lie

awake nights wondering how I could catch up with the rival institution.

Well, I hustled around, and finally I got hold of two or three children

who were old enough for accounts, and I set them to work on single entry.

I don't know whether they learned anything, but _I_ did--enough to keep

Granger's books for the first year after we started out."

Jane smiled broadly; it was useless to set a stoic face against such

confidences as these.

"We were married at the most fashionable church in town--right there in

Court-house Square; and ma gave us a reception, or something like it, in

her little front room. We weren't so very stylish ourselves, but we had

some awfully stylish neighbors--all those Terrace Row people, just around

the corner. 'We'll get there, too, some time,' I said to Granger. 'This

is going to be a big town, and we have a good show to be big people in

it. Don't let's start in life like beggars going to the back door for

cold victuals; let's march right up the front steps and ring the bell

_like_ somebody.' So, as I say, we were married at the best church in

town; we thought it safe enough to discount the future."

"Good for you!" said Jane, who was finding her true self in the thick of

these intimate revelations; "you guessed right."

"Well, we worked along fairly for a year or two, and finally I said to

Granger: 'Now, what's the use of inventing things and taking them to

those companies and making everybody rich but yourself? You pick out some

one road, and get on the inside of that, and stick there, and--The fact

is," she broke off suddenly, "you can't judge at all of this room in the

daytime. You must see it lighted and filled with people. You ought

to have been here at the _bal poudré_ I gave last season--lots of pretty

girls in laces and brocades, and powder on their hair. It was a lovely

sight."

"It must have been. I believe Rosy would have looked real pretty fixed up

that way."

"Rosy?"

"Our youngest; she's eighteen."

"Is she out?"

"Not quite; but I expect she's on the way."

"Is she pretty?"

"Yes," replied the just Jane. "Yes, Rosy is quite pretty. She's dark. She

would look lovely in yellow tulle--with a red rose somewhere."

"Is she clever?"

"H'm," said Jane, thoughtfully, "I suppose so. She's beginning to

understand how to get what she wants, anyway."

"And just the least bit selfish and inconsiderate?" insinuated Mrs.

Bates, shrewdly.

"Y--yes, I'm afraid so."

"Well, she might be quite a success; we must think about her. Come; we've

had enough of this." Mrs. Bates turned a careless back upon all her Louis

Quinze spendor. "The next thing will be something else."

V

Jane's guide passed swiftly into another large and imposing apartment.

"This I call the Sala de los Embajadores; here is where I receive my

distinguished guests."

"Good!" cried Jane, who knew Irving's _Alhambra_ by heart. "Only it isn't

Moorish; it's Baroque--and a very good example."

The room had a heavy panelled ceiling of dark wood, with a cartouche in

each panel; stacks of seventeenth-century armor stood in the corners,

half a dozen large Aubusson tapestries hung on the walls, and a vast

fireplace, flanked by huge Atlantes and crowned by a heavy pediment

broken and curled, almost filled one whole side. "That fireplace is

Baroque all over."

"See here," said Mrs. Bates, suddenly; "are you the woman who read about

the Decadence of the Renaissance Forms at the last Fortnightly?"

"I'm the woman," responded Jane, modestly.

"I don't know why I didn't recognize you before. But you sat in an

awfully bad light, for one thing. Besides, I had so much on my mind that

day. Our dear little Reginald was coming down with something--or so we

thought. And the bonnet I was forced to wear--well, it just made me blue.

You didn't notice it?"

"I was too flustered to notice anything. It was my first time there."

"Well, it was a good paper, although I couldn't half pay attention to it;

it gave me several new notions. All my decorations, then--you think them

corrupt and degraded?"

"Well," returned Jane, at once soothing and judicial, "all these later

forms are interesting from an historical and sociological point of view.

And lots of people find them beautiful, too, for that matter." Jane slid

over these big words with a practised ease.

"They impressed my notables, anyway," retorted Mrs. Bates. "We

entertained a great deal during the Fair--it was expected, of course,

from people of our position. We had princes and counts and honorables

without end. I remember how delighted I was with my first prince--a

Russian. H'm! later in the season Russian princes were as plentiful as

blackberries: you stepped on one at every turn. We had some of the

English, too. One of their young men visited us at Geneva during the

summer. I never quite made out who invited him; I have half an idea that

he invited himself. He was a great trial. Queer about the English, isn't

it? How can people who are so clever and capable in practical things ever

be such insolent tom-fools in social things? Do you know Arthur Paston?"

"No. Was he one of them?

"Not exactly. He lives here. We thought we had Americanized him; but now

he has slipped back and is almost as bad as he was to start with. Arthur

Scodd-Paston--that's the way his cards read to-day. Do you care for

paintings?"

"Of course. Is Arthur Scodd-Paston like one?"

"You bad girl! Well, we might just stick our noses in the picture-gallery

for a minute.

"We're almost beginners in this branch of industry," she expounded, as

she stood beside Jane in the center of the room under the coldly diffused

glare of the skylight. "In my young days it was all Bierstadt and De

Haas; there wasn't supposed to be anything beyond. But as soon as I began

to hear about Millet and the Barbizon crowd, I saw there was. Well, I set

to work, as usual. I studied and learned. I _want_ to learn. I want to

move; I want to keep right up with the times and the people. I got books

and photographs, and I went to all the galleries. I read the artists'

biographies and took in all the loan collections. Now I'm loaning, too.

Some of these things are going to the Art Institute next week--that

Daubigny, for one. It's little, but it's good; there couldn't be anything

more like him, could there?

"We haven't got any Millet yet, but that morning thing over there is a

Corot--at least, we think so. I was going to ask one of the French

commissioners about it last summer, but my nerve gave out at the last

minute. Mr. Bates bought it on his own responsibility. I let him go

ahead, for, after all, people of our position would naturally be expected

to have a Corot. I don't dare tell you what he paid for it. If I

did"--she pointed to their joint reflection in the opposite mirror--"we

should have a fretful porcupine here in no time."

"Don't, then," pleaded Jane, looking at her own reflection and clasping

her hands across her forehead; "this miserable bang gives me enough

trouble as it is."

"There's some more high art," said Mrs. Bates, with a wave of her hand

towards the opposite wall. "Carolus-Duran; fifty thousand francs; and he

wouldn't let me pick out my own costume, either. You have never seen me

on dress-parade; take a look at me now." She gathered up the tail of her

gown and modestly scuttled out of the room.

Poor dowdy Jane stood in silent awe before this sumptuous canvas, with

her long, interlaced fingers strenuously tugging at each other and her

wide eyes half popping from her head. She was as completely overpowered

and shattered as an uncouth and angular raft under the thunderous

downpour of Niagara. Presently she turned; Mrs. Bates stood peeping in

from without, her eyes all a-twinkle.

"And now," she said, "let's go up-stairs." Jane followed her, too dazed

to speak or even to smile.

Mrs. Bates hastened forward, lightfootedly. "Conservatory--_that's_

Moorish," she indicated, casually; "nothing in it but orchids and things.

Come along." Jane followed--dumbly, humbly.

Mrs. Bates paused on the lower step of her great stairway. A huge vase of

Japanese bronze flanked either newel, and a Turkish lantern depended

above her head. The bright green of a dwarf palm peeped over the

balustrade, and a tempered light strained down through the painted window

on the landing-stage.

"There!" she said; "you've seen it all." She stood there in a kind of

impassioned splendor, her jewelled fingers shut tightly and her fists

thrown out and apart so as to show the veins and cords of her wrists.

"_We_ did it, we two--just Granger and I. Nothing but our own hands and

hearts and hopes, and each other. We have fought the fight--a fair field

and no favor--and we have come out ahead. And we shall stay there, too;

keep up with the procession is my motto, and head it if you can. I _do_

head it, and I feel that I'm where I belong. When I can't foot it with

the rest, let me drop by the wayside and the crows have me. But they'll

never get me--never! There's ten more good years in me yet; and if we

were to slip to the bottom to-morrow, we should work back to the top

again before we finished. When I led the grand march at the Charity Ball

I was accused of taking a vainglorious part in a vainglorious show. Well,

who would look better in such a rôle than I, or who has earned a better

right to play it? There, child! ain't that success? ain't that glory?

ain't that poetry?--H'm," she broke off suddenly, "I'm glad Jimmy wasn't

by to hear that! He's always taking up his poor mother."

"Jimmy? Is he humble-minded--do you mean?"

"Humble-minded? One of my boys humble-minded? No, indeed; he's

grammatical, that's all; he prefers 'isn't.' Come up."

Mrs. Bates hurried her guest over the stairway and through several halls

and passages, and introduced her finally into a large and spacious room

done in white and gold. In the glittering electrolier wires mingled with

pipes and bulbs with globes. To one side stood a massive brass bedstead

full panoplied in coverlet and pillow-cases, and the mirror of the

dressing-case reflected a formal row of silver-backed brushes and combs.

"My bedroom," said Mrs. Bates. "How does it strike you?"

"Why," stammered Jane, "It's all very fine, but--"

"Oh yes; I know what they say about it--I've heard them a dozen times.

'It's very big and handsome and all, but not a bit home-like. _I_

shouldn't want to sleep here.' Is that the idea?"

"About," said Jane.

"Sleep here!" echoed Mrs. Bates. "I _don't_ sleep here. I'd as soon think

of sleeping out on the prairie. That bed isn't to _sleep_ in; it's for

the women to lay their hats and cloaks on. Lay yours there now."

Jane obeyed. She worked herself out of her old blue sack, and disposed

it, neatly folded, on the brocaded coverlet. Then she took off her mussy

little turban and placed it on the sack. "What a strange woman," she

murmured to herself. "She doesn't get any music out of her piano; she

doesn't get any reading out of her books; she doesn't even get any sleep

out of her bed." Jane smoothed down her hair and awaited the next stage

of her adventure.

"This is the way." Mrs. Bates led her through a narrow side-door, and

Jane found herself in a small room where another young woman sat before a

trim bird's-eye-maple desk, whose drawers and pigeonholes were stuffed

with cards and letters and papers. "This is my office. Miss Marshall,

Miss Peters," she said, in the tone of introduction.

The other girl rose. She was tall and slender, like Jane. She had a pasty

complexion and weak, reddish eyes. Her expression was somewhat plaintive

and distressed--irritating, too, in the long run.

"Step along," called Mrs. Bates. She traversed the "office," passed into

a room beyond, pushed Jane ahead of her, and shut the door. "I don't care

if it _does_ hurt her feelings." Mrs. Bates's reference appeared to be to

Miss Peters.

The door closed with a light click, and Jane looked about her with a

great and sudden surprise. Poor stupid, stumbling child!--she understood

at last in what spirit she had been received and on what footing she had

been placed.

She found herself in a small, cramped, low-ceiled room which was filled

with worn and antiquated furniture. There was a ponderous old mahogany

bureau, with the veneering cracked and peeled, and a bed to correspond.

There was a shabby little writing-desk, whose let-down lid was lined with

faded and blotted green baize. On the floor there was an old Brussels

carpet, antique as to pattern, and wholly threadbare as to surface.

The walls were covered with an old-time paper whose plaintive

primitiveness ran in slender pink stripes alternating with narrow green

vines. In one corner stood a small upright piano whose top was littered

with loose sheets of old music, and on one wall hung a set of thin

black-walnut shelves strung together with cords and loaded with a variety

of well-worn volumes. In the grate was a coal fire. Mrs. Bates sat down

on the foot of the bed and motioned Jane to a small rocker that had been

re-seated with a bit of old rugging.

"And now," she said, cheerily, "let's get to business. Sue Bates, at your

service."

"Oh, no," gasped Jane, who felt, however dumbly and mistily, that this

was an epoch in her life. "Not here; not to-day."

"Why not? Go ahead; tell me all about the charity that isn't a charity.

You'd better; this is the last room--there's nothing beyond." Her eyes

were twinkling, but immensely kind.

"I know it," stammered Jane. "I knew it in a second." She felt, too, that

not a dozen persons had ever penetrated to this little chamber. "How good

you are to me!"

Presently, under some compulsion, she was making an exposition of her

small plans. Mrs. Bates was made to understand how some of the old

Dearborn Seminary girls were trying to start a sort of clubroom in some

convenient down-town building for typewriters and saleswomen and others

employed in business. There was to be a room where they could get lunch,

or bring their own to eat, if they preferred; also a parlor where they

could fill up their noon hour with talk or reading or music; it was the

expectation to have a piano and a few books and magazines.

"I remembered Lottie as one of the girls who went with us there, down on

old Dearborn Place, and I thought perhaps I could interest Lottie's

mother," concluded Jane.

"And so you can," said Lottie's mother, promptly. "I'll have Miss

Peters--but don't you find it a little warm here? Just pass me that

hair-brush."

Mrs. Bates had stepped to her single little window. "Isn't it a gem?" she

asked. "I had it made to order; one of the old-fashioned sort, you

see--two sash, with six little panes in each. No weights and cords, but

simply catches at the side. It opens to just two widths; if I want

anything different, I have to contrive it for myself. Sometimes I use a

hair-brush and sometimes a paper-cutter."

"Dear me," asked Jane, "is that sort of thing a rarity? 'Most every

window in our house is like this. I prop mine with a curling-iron."

"And now," said Mrs. Bates, resuming, "how much is it going to take to

start things? I should think that five hundred dollars would do to get

you under way." She opened the door. "Miss Peters, won't you please make

out a check for five hun--"

"Oh, bless your soul!" cried Jane, "we don't need but three hundred all

together, and I can't have one woman--"

"Three hundred, then," Mrs. Bates called into the next room.

"Oh, goodness me!" cried Jane, despairingly, "I don't want one woman to

give it all. I've got a whole list here. You're the first one I've seen."

"Well, how much, then? Fifty?"

"Fifty, yes. That's quite as much as I expected--more."

"Fifty, Miss Peters; payable to Jane Marshall." She looked at Jane

quizzically. "You _are_ unique, sure enough."

"I want to be fair," protested Jane.

The door closed on Miss Peters. Mrs. Bates dropped her voice. "Did you

ever have a private secretary?"

"Me?" called Jane. "I'm my own."

"Keep it that way," said Mrs. Bates, impressively. "Don't ever change--no

matter how many engagements and appointments and letters and dates you

come to have. You'll never spend a happy day afterwards. Tutors are bad

enough--but, thank goodness, my boys are past that age. And men servants

are bad enough--every time I want to stir in my own house I seem to have

a footman on each toe and a butler standing on my train; however, people

in our position--well, Granger insists, you know. But Minnie

Peters--Minnie Peters is the worst of all. Every so often"--in a low

voice and with her eye on the door--"she has one of her humble days, and

then I want to die. That was what was the matter before you came--I

didn't really mean to seem cross to you. I just have to take her and

shake her and say, 'Now, Minnie Peters, how can you be so bad to me? How

can you think I would do anything to hurt your feelings, when your mother

was my very best friend? Why are you always looking for a chance to find

a slight, when'--Oh, thanks, thanks!"--Miss Peters having appeared with

the check. Mrs. Bates clapped on the signature at her little old desk.

"There, my child. And good-luck to the club-room.

"And now business is over," she continued. "Do you like my posies?" She

nodded towards the window where, thanks to the hair-brush, a row of

flowers in a long narrow box blew about in the draught.

"Asters?"

"No, no, no! But I hoped you'd guess asters. They're chrysanthemums--you

see, fashion will penetrate even here. But they're the smallest and

simplest I could find. What do I care for orchids and American beauties,

and all those other expensive things under glass? How much does it please

me to have two great big formal beds of gladiolus and foliage plants in

the front yard, one on each side of the steps? Still, with our position,

I suppose it can't be helped. No; what I want is a bed of portulacca, and

some cypress vines running up strings to the top of a pole. As soon as I

get poor enough to afford it I'm going to have a lot of phlox and London

pride and bachelor's buttons out there in the back yard, and the girls

can run their clotheslines somewhere else."

"It's hard to keep flowers in a city," said Jane.

"I know it is. At our old house we had such a nice little rosebush in

the front yard. I hated so to leave it behind--one of those little

yellow brier-roses. No, it wasn't yellow; it was just--'yaller.' And it

always scratched my nose when I tried to smell it. But oh,

child"--wistfully--"if I could only smell it now!"

"Couldn't you have transplanted it?" asked Jane, sympathetically.

"I went back the very next day after we moved out, with a peach-basket

and a fire-shovel. But my poor bush was buried under seven feet of yellow

sand. To-day there's seven stories of brick and mortar. So all I've got

from the old place is just this furniture of ma's and the wall-paper."

"The wall-paper?"

"Not the identical same, of course. It's like what I had in my bedroom

when I was a girl. I remembered the pattern, and tried everywhere to

match it. At first I just tried on Twenty-second Street. Then I went

down-town. Then I tried all the little places away out on the West Side.

Then I had the pattern put down on paper, and I made a tour of the

country. I went to Belvidere, and to Beloit, and to Janesville, and to

lots of other places between here and Geneva. And finally--"

"Well, what--finally?"

"Finally, I sent down East and had eight or ten rolls made to order. I

chased harder than anybody ever chased for a Raphael, and I spent more

than if I had hung the room with Gobelins; but--"

She stroked the narrow strips of pink and green with a fond hand, and

cast on Jane a look which pleaded indulgence. "Isn't it just too quaintly

ugly for anything?"

"It isn't any such thing," cried Jane. "It's just as sweet as it can be!

I only wish mine was like it."

Mrs. Bates glanced from the wall-paper to the window-box, and from the

window down into the back yard, where, beneath the week's washing,

flapping in the breeze and the sun, she saw next summer's flowers already

blooming.

"Did you read that paragraph last week," she asked, suddenly, "about my

having been a washer-woman once?"

"No. What was it in?"

"One of those miserable society papers. Do you know there's a man in this

town who makes his living by sending such things to New York? Something

scandalous, if possible; if not scandalous, then libellous; if not

actually libellous, then derogatory and offensive."

"I never read such stuff," said Jane; "especially about people I like. I

always skip it,"

"Yes, but it's true. I can't deny it. I _was_ a washerwoman for a whole

year. I washed all Granger's shirts and starched them and ironed them,

and put them away and got them out and washed them again for months and

months. Every one went through the mill pretty often, too; there weren't

very many of them.

"Those are Granger's shirts out on the line there, now--the big ones.

Those in the other row are Jimmy's--the little ones."

"H'm!" observed Jane, standing beside her at the window; "which _are_ the

little ones?"

Mrs. Bates laughed. "Well, perhaps there isn't much difference. Jimmy is

eighteen and large for his age, but of course his _seem_ the littlest. I

had them made in the house, but he set off to college before I could

finish with them. Perhaps they're just as well here, until the Sophomores

have finished with _him_.

"Yes," she went on, proudly, "I could wash shirts then, and I can make

shirts now. A woman, it seems to me, may do anything for herself or for

those belonging to her; and I've always tried to be a lady and a woman

too. I made all Jimmy's button-holes and worked all the initials on the

tabs." She looked appealingly at Jane. "I know you think I'm a silly old

thing...."

"I don't either!" cried Jane, loudly, with a tremble on her lip and a hot

tear starting in each eye. "I don't either; you know I don't! You know

what I think! You're a dear, good, lovely woman; and I've been just as

mean and hateful to you as I could! I don't see," she went on, in a great

burst on contrition, "how you could talk to me; I don't see how you could

let me stay one minute in your house. If you only knew all the mean,

ugly, uncharitable things I have thought about you since that man let me

in! How could you stand me? How could you keep from having me turned

out?"

"I am used to being misunderstood," said Mrs. Bates, quietly. "I took you

at first for your father's sake, and I kept you for your own. It's a long

time since I have met a girl like you; I didn't suppose there was one

left in the whole town. You are one of _us_--the old settlers, the

aborigines. Do you know what I'm going to do some time? I'm going to have

a regular aboriginal pow-wow, and all the old-timers shall be invited.

We'll have a reel, and forfeits, and all sorts of things; and off to one

side of the wigwam there shall be two or three beautiful young squaws to

pour firewater. Will you be one of them?"

"Well," Jane hesitated, "I'm not so very young, you know; nor so very

beautiful, either."

"You are to me," responded Mrs. Bates, with a caloric brevity.

"Nobody shall come," she went on, "who wasn't here before the War. Those

who came before the Incorporation--that was in '37, wasn't it?--shall be

doubly welcome. And if I can find any one who passed through the Massacre

(as an infant, you understand), he shall have the head place. I mean to

ask your father--and your mother," she added, with a firm but delicate

emphasis. "I must call on her presently."

She fixed her eyes on the fireplace. "I suppose I was silly--the way I

acted when your father married," she went on, carefully. "We were only

friends; there was really nothing between us; but I was piqued and--oh,

well, you know how it is."

"I!" cried Jane, routed by her alarm from her contrite and tearful mood.

"I? Not the least bit, I assure you!" She blushed and gulped and ducked

her head and half hid her face behind her hand. "Not the least in the

world. Why, if I were to die to-morrow nobody would care but pa and ma

and Roger and Truesdale and Alice; well--and Rosy; yes, perhaps Rosy

would care for me--if I was dead. But nobody else; oh, dear, no!" She

stared at Mrs. Bates with a hard, wide brightness.

Mrs. Bates considerately shifted her gaze to the front of the bureau. She

ran her eye down one row of knobs: "I wonder who he is?" And up the

other: "I hope he is worthy of her."

Doubly considerate, she turned her back, too. She began to rummage among

the drawers of her old desk. "There!" she said, presently, "I knew I

could put my hands on it."

She set a daguerreotype before Jane. Its oval was bordered with a narrow

line of gilded metal and its small square back was covered with embossed

brown leather. "There, now! Do you know who that is?"

Jane looked back and forth doubtfully between the picture and its owner.

"Is it--is it--pa?"

Mrs. Bates nodded.

Jane regarded the daguerreotype with a puzzled fascination. "Did my

father ever wear his hair all wavy across his forehead that way, and have

such a thing tied around his throat, and wear a vest all covered with

those little gold sprigs?"

"Precisely. That's just the way he looked the last time we danced

together. And what do you suppose the dance was? Guess and guess and

guess again! It was this."

Mrs. Bates whisked herself on to the piano-stool and began to play and to

sing. Her touch was heavy and spirited, but her voice was easily audible

above the instrument.

"'Old Dan Tucker, he got drunk;

He jumped in the fire and he kicked up a chunk

Of red-hot charcoal with his shoe.

Lordy! how the ashes flew-hoo!'"

Jane dropped the daguerreotype in time to take up the refrain:

"'Clear the road for old Dan Tucker!

You're too late to get your supper.

Clear the road for old Dan--'"

"Aha! you know it!" cried Mrs. Bates, gayly.

"Of course," responded Jane. "My education may be modern, on the whole;

but it hasn't neglected the classics completely! Gentlemen forward!" she

said, with a sudden cry, which sent Mrs. Bates's fingers back to the

keyboard; "_gentlemen_ forward to Mister Tucker!" Mrs. Bates pounded

loudly, and Jane pirouetted up to her from behind.

"_Ladies_ forward to Mister Tucker!" cried Jane, and Mrs. Bates left the

stool and began dancing towards her. Then she danced back and took her

seat again; but with the first chord:

"ALL forward to Mister Tucker!" called Jane again; and they met face to

face in the middle of the room and burst out laughing. The door opened on

a narrow crack, and there appeared Miss Peters's plaintive and inquiring

countenance.

Mrs. Bates banished her assistant by one look of pathetic protest.

"There!" she said, transferring the look to Jane, "you see how it always

is when I am trying to have a good time! Even at my own table I can't

budge or crack a joke; with those two men behind my chair I feel like my

own tombstone. Lock that door," she said to Jane; "I _will_ have a good

time, in spite of them! Sit down; I'm going to play the 'Java March' for

you."

She struck out several ponderous and vengeful chords. "Why," called Jane,

"is _that_ the 'Java March'?"

She spread out her elbows and stalked up and down singing:

"'Oh, the _Dutch_ compa-_nee_

Is the _best_ compa-_nee_!'"

"Right again!" cried Mrs. Bates. "You _are_ one of us--just as I said!"

"Well, if that's the 'Java March,'" said Jane, "it's in an old book we

used to have about the house years and years ago. Only, if you bring it

up as an example of pa's taste--"

"He liked it because I played it, perhaps," said Mrs. Bates, quietly.

"Besides, why should you put it to those shocking words? It _is_ in that

book," she continued, "and I've got one here just like it."

"Is it the one with 'Roll on, Silver Moon,' and 'Wild roved the Indian

maid, bright What's-her-name'?"

"Bright Alfarata. Same one, exactly. Bring up another chair, and we'll go

through a whole programme of classics--pruggrum, I mean."

"Let's see, though," said Jane, looking at her watch. "Mercy me! where

has the morning gone? It's after eleven o'clock."

"Supposing it is after eleven; supposing it was after a hundred and

eleven? You're going to stay to lunch."

"I'd love to so much; but I just can't. I've got too many other scalps to

take. So many thanks for yours! I'm going to work north towards the

Monument--another Massacre!"

"Well, Wednesday, then, without fail."

They retraced their steps past the mournful Miss Peters and through the

vast state bedroom. On the stairs Mrs. Bates said:

"I _do_ remember your aunt, Mrs. Rhodes, now," The conscientious creature

had been taxing her memory for an hour. Jane felt that this was a

tribute, not to her aunt, but to herself.

"Yes," Mrs. Bates went on, "she's a little, plump, dark woman, and when

she sits down she wiggles and flounces and goes all in a heap--like

this." Mrs. Bates illustrated by means of the window-seat on the landing.

"Yes," assented Jane. She could not reproach Mrs. Bates for thus

indulging her sense of humor in order to recoup herself for the tax on

her memory.

"And when she goes down-stairs, it's like this." She gathered up her gown

and sidled down affectedly over the remaining steps.

"That's it," said Jane, joining her in the hall below.

Mrs. Bates opened the front door herself. "You can take the choo-choo

cars at Sixteenth, you know, and get off at Van Buren. Oh, dear; excuse

my baby-talk; our little Reginald--two months old, you know. I'll have

Lottie home for that lunch of ours."

"Don't apologize," said Jane. "I often use the same expression myself."

"Why, is there a baby at your house!"

"Well," said Jane, rather lamely, "Alice has got a little girl three

years old."

"So David Marshall is a grandfather? But what is there extraordinary in

that?--I'm one myself." She stood in the big porch looking down the

street--at nothing." Well, now I _am_ going to," she said, half to

herself. "_That_ settles it!"

She accompanied Jane half-way down the steps, bareheaded as she was, and

in her morning-gown. A society reporter who happened to be passing

originated the rumor that she had gone insane.

"Good-luck, my child. Use my name everywhere. Take all that anybody

offers. Good-by! Good-by!"

Jane retraced her steps to kiss her. She had not kissed her own mother

for ten years.