CHAPTER I

THE BIRD IN

THE BOX

BY MARY MEARS

Author of "The Breath of The Runners"

TORONTO

WILLIAM BRIGGS

_All rights reserved, including that of translation

into foreign languages including the Scandinavian_

Copyright, 1910, by

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

October, 1910

To

THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER

"NELLY WILDWOOD"

THIS BOOK IS DEVOTEDLY INSCRIBED

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

The soul of man at birth is immured in a prison. It is like a bird

singing in a cage, heedless of the bars that confine it. But later the

soul knows its bondage.

Panting with a desire for liberty, man tries in two ways to attain it,

through his ability to labour, through his capacity to feel.

He has need of freedom, hence the poem, the ship, the engine, the

thousand cunning and gigantic structures for annihilating space, for

chaining the forces of nature.

He has need of freedom, hence the universal outpouring of his

affections, the glory and the emancipation of his highest love.

June, 1910

CONTENTS

BOOK I

CHAPTER

I The Long Journey and the Longer One

II The Waiting of Women

III The Sun

IV Amid Bleak Surroundings

V The Barnacle

VI The Figure-head Gains an Admirer

VII Concerning Alexander Emil St. Ives

VIII In the Cause of Science

IX The Old Fascination

X In Which a Kiss Is Given and Regretted

XI At the Old Burying Point

XII The Migratory Instinct

BOOK II

I The Street of Masts

II Emily Short--Toy-Maker

III Simon Hart to the Rescue

IV The Unexpected Happens

V Showing that Sacrifices Are not Always Appreciated

VI Despair and Desolation

VII Stop--Look--Listen

VIII A Woman's Caprice; A Father's Repentance;

A Lover's Self-Conquest; A Girl's Pity

IX Rachel--Simon

X The Bird in the Box

BOOK III

I The House in Washington Square

II Continuation of the History of a Genius

III The Confession

IV How is it Possible to Stop Loving

V Love by the Sea

VI The Insistent Past

VII In Which John Smith Unburdens His Conscience

VIII The Place of the Statues

IX The Energy of Being

X In the Garden

XI Flames

XII Love Confronts Despair

XIII The Escape

BOOK I

THE BIRD IN THE BOX

CHAPTER I

THE LONG JOURNEY AND THE LONGER ONE

The new vessel, gay with swelling scarves of bunting, ornamented from

stem to stern with floating flags that kissed the breeze, rested easily

on the stocks. The ways under her had been greased, the space before

her in the river cleared. High on the prow her name _Merida_ shone in

gold letters. Every eye was upon her.

Grimy faces looked from shop windows. The windows of the bending-shed,

the blackboard-shed, the pipe-cutting shop, the sheet-iron shop, the

joiner-shop, the brass-foundry,--all were filled with countenances

blackened by labour. Similar countenances peered from the masts of

vessels still in the slips, and from the heights of the immense

travelling cranes and floating derricks. These gigantic and uncouth

machines seemed to await the launch with an eagerness of their own.

Had not each, in its own way, helped to fashion her--this marvel of a

new ship?

The contrivances for drilling, chipping, caulking, blowing

rivet-heating fires seemed to hold their breath, so unwonted was their

stillness at this hour; while the mammoth pontoon, whose duty was still

to be performed,--that of transporting the eighty-ton boiler a distance

of one hundred feet and depositing it, a living heart, within the

vessel,--the pontoon seemed to be lost in speculation.

The stocks gave no sign. Amid all the excitement of the yard, these

great mother-arms of wood awaited stoically the instant when they must

release their burden. All the morning a swarm of workmen had been busy

loosening their tenacious hold on the new vessel.

"She'll go out at the turn of the tide," remarked a reporter; "that

chap over there with an eyeglass will give the signal. He's launched

over a hundred vessels, and never a hitch."

The newspaper artist to whom these remarks were addressed, scarcely

heeded them. He was busy with his sketch. But an old man, standing

near, caught the words and shivered ecstatically.

"She's a Ward liner to be used in the fruit trade between New York and

Havana," continued the reporter. "Look, there comes the launching

party now," he cried. "The messenger boy has the flowers,--and that's

the girl who's to do the christening! She's the granddaughter of the

owner. Rather good looking, don't you think?"

The old man turned squarely about. His stick shook in his hand.

Excitement gripped him by the throat. He smiled broadly. The girl,

accompanied by a bevy of friends, came forward. She was a slight

thing, dressed in grey, and had about her neck a white feather boa,

which fluttered in the breeze. Escorted by a man wearing a high hat,

who helped her over the obstructions, she approached the new vessel,

lifting blue eyes to the imposing height. A platform, reached by a

slant of stairway and bright with red, white and blue bunting, had been

built against the boat's bow. The girl's slim fingers grasped the

railing, and followed by the rest of the party, she lightly ascended

the steps.

Immediately there was a commotion. A score or more workmen, like

elves, swarmed beneath the immense swelling sides of the boat, and with

rhythmical strokes of sledge hammers, drove in wedges and removed the

long pieces of timber placed in a slanting position against the ship.

Thus lifted, the _Merida_ rested completely on the greased ways. Only

one log now restrained the six hundred feet of her impatient length.

Was it the mother's lingering hold?

Red below the water-line, black above, her new anchor turned to silver

in the sunlight, the _Merida_ was without blemish, save for the spots

left when the shores were hauled down; and these spots workmen,

carrying long-handled brushes, touched rapidly with paint. At last all

was in readiness and the dull sound of a saw passing through wood could

be heard. The silence grew so deep that the word given by the man

wearing the eyeglass was heard by the spectators. He spoke quietly;

the saw passed through the log. The girl with the fluttering boa was

seen to raise her hand; there was a shattering of glass, and with one

plunge, one impulse of superb motion, the new ship slid down the ways.

Swiftly, smoothly, she glided forward and the laughing water seemed to

rise to meet her.

Instantly from an hundred throats a shout went up. The boats watching

from the river began to whistle, the locomotives on the surrounding

railroads shrieked shrilly. The workmen threw their caps into the air

and followed as fast as they could along the line of the deserted

stocks. The girl in the white boa waved her handkerchief. But the

boats on the river had their own way. Shrilly, loudly, continuously,

they tooted; while those still in the slips,--double-turreted monitors

and squat battleships,--without bells, without whistles, without

cannon,--by the very eagerness with which they seemed to await their

turn, added mystically to the commotion.

_Free_! This was the one thought expressed on every side. It was as

if man, by the intensity of his craving to escape bonds, communicated

this desire to the objects of his creation. The impulse of the

launching had carried the new ship to the middle of the stream, and

there, hailed by the enthusiasm of the shore and the river, she

floated, half-turning as if looking back coquettishly at the land;

while over her a flock of birds, little specks in air, circled in an

abandonment of freedom.

Amid all the tumult only one figure had remained without stirring. The

old man with the stick in his hand was a stranger; until that day he

had never been seen in the place. Yet, at the moment of the launch, he

alone reached the highest pitch of exultation of which the human spirit

is capable.

No longer conscious of his body, he laughed while great tears rolled

down his cheeks and lost themselves in his beard. Suddenly, however,

he looked at the ways covered with tallow which lay in folds

now,--wrinkled like the flesh of the very old,--at the stocks lifting

empty arms to the sky; and a change came over him. The sparkles died

in his eyes, the eyes themselves seemed to sink back in his head. He

lifted his hand. Then, after a wavering second, the hand fell.

"Ships," he quavered, speaking half to himself, half, it would seem, to

the deserted stocks, "ships is like sons. There's no use clutchin' 'em

or hangin' on to 'em. It's their nature to go exploitin' over the

world. All we can say is, the Lord bless 'em, the Lord reveal his

mighty wonders to 'em. Amen."

After this quaint speech, his spirit, which was the eternal youth

within him, revived. Chuckling to himself, old David Beckett started

on his homeward journey to Pemoquod Point on the Maine coast, a day's

and a night's travel, by water and rail. His pilgrimage to

Philadelphia, from every point of view but his own, had proved

unsuccessful.

Five months before, David's son, Thomas Beckett, had disappeared from

the Point and had gone to Philadelphia to work in the shipyards.

Beyond the bald statement of this fact, which he left scrawled on the

back of an envelope, young Thomas had never written a word home, though

once he had sent a draft for a small sum of money. His was an

impatient, gloomy spirit, easily depressed and easily excited. Life,

indeed, either blazed in him like a devouring flame, or died down to a

flicker which left him frozen and taciturn, with never a word on his

thick, handsome lips, and no feeling in his heart, save, apparently,

that of a fierce caged thing. In this mood when at home he had been

wont to go about for weeks, leaving the care of the lobster pots

entirely to his father, while he nursed his insensate wrath. Then,

suddenly, the light would come. He would set about his work with

savage joy, and with painful eagerness would read every book that came

to his hand, from the Bible to a ten cent translation of a French

novel. He would sing, he would lay plans. It was in this mood that he

had gone to Philadelphia. When, however, his father followed him,

bearing urgent news concerning the young fellow's wife, Thomas had

again disappeared. Two weeks before, so old David learned, he had

shipped as a sailor on an out-going vessel he had helped to build. But

the father understood.

"I tell ye, Zary," he proclaimed the following evening in Old Harbour,

as he clambered into the cart of his friend Zarah Patch, blandly

ignoring the question in the other's face, "Philadelphy's changed since

the days when I used to work in the car shops at t'other end of the

town. There wa'n't any sech vessels built then. Double-turreted

monitors and iron-clad battleships and cruisers that blaze with lights

at night jest like floating hotels, all gilt furniture and white paint.

Times has changed. Why some of them ships, when they was finished,

they told me, would have as many as four engines apiece a-beatin'

inside of 'em, to say nothin' of cylinders and twin-screws; and the

fightin' ships would jest bristle with breach-loading rifles and

Gatling guns. Think of the commotion they'll make when they're once

finished, all them ships!" he concluded gleefully. "Yet there they

stood, each in its stocks, quiet as lambs, helpless as babes unborn."

As David uttered the last words, Zarah gave him a sidelong glance,

though he made no comment other than the sharp flap he gave the reins

on the mare's back. He was not given to speech. Zarah owned a bit of

ground on which he raised vegetables which he delivered to the summer

hotel. He also carried what travellers there were from Old Harbour

dock to Pemoquod. To-night David, the lobsterman, was his one

passenger.

It was about seven o'clock of an evening in late summer, and across

that bleak, barren bit of land the sun was just setting. As they drove

along, it sparkled on the window panes of the houses and lit up the

cross on the Catholic church; beyond the village it seemed to confine

itself to the rocks by the wayside. It turned them a dull soft gold.

A strong salt breeze was blowing.

Bony with boulders, the land reached like an eager arm into the sea, as

if it would obtain somewhat. But beyond the dories of the lobstermen

clinging close in shore and visible as the road ascended to a slight

eminence, nothing told of any garnering whatsoever. On every side were

wastes of long brownish grass, low shrubs and clumps of pines, that

stood up stark by the roadside. Beneath the dark shade of the trees

mushrooms and little clumps of shell were embedded in moss.

Of farms, strictly speaking, there were none, though the houses that

revealed themselves occasionally as the road dipped and turned, had

each its poor attempt at a garden. It was frankly a land of bleak

striving, bordering closely on want, of roistering storms and sweet,

enveloping fogs.

As David Beckett talked he raised his voice to a piping treble. Ships

and the building of ships, this was his theme. And exalted beyond time

and reality, he gave himself up to it, so that at last even Zarah was

influenced. Its poetry began to work in his slower brain and his lips

relaxed into a smile.

As the sun neared the horizon, the wind increased, and in every

direction the shrubs bent before it with a writhing movement; and as

far as the eye could see, an agitation ran through the coarse grass.

From the sea came the steady moaning of the surf. It was as if the

earth emitted heavy sighs; but for these two ancient men the burdens

that weigh upon human life had ceased to exist.

The house before which they presently stopped was a gaunt frame

structure with scarcely a trace of whitewash remaining upon its

clapboards. Cold and exposed it turned its front door away from the

road with New England reserve. A lilac bush grew under one of the

windows. With every breath of wind it sawed against the sill. As

David possessed himself of his carpet-bag and turned in at the gate

with a wave of the hand, the sun, which until that moment had shone

full upon this window, disappeared. Shadows and the old man entered

the house together.

Flushed like Ulysses returned from his adventures, old David deposited

his grip-sack in the entry and then cautiously approached his

daughter-in-law's room. She lay there in a great bed with four posts,

and in her thin fingers, she held a leaf of the lilac bush--a leaf like

a green heart.

The old man peered in at her, pursing up his lips. He thought that his

story would "liven Laviny up," and he was enjoying the prospect of

relating it, when she turned toward him. She half lifted herself on

her elbow. Her face was ghastly, her eyes shining. She looked past

him; then fixed her eyes wildly on his face. But he shook his head at

her and began speaking with soft jocularity.

"No, I didn't bring him, I couldn't; let me tell you how it was;" and

he advanced smiling into the room. "Day after day as Thomas seen that

ship he was at work on, grow up taller in the stocks; as he fitted them

pieces of red tin unto her sides,--for Thomas was what they call a

'fitter-up', Laviny,--he had his thoughts. And you an' me, knowin'

him, we know pretty well what those thoughts were. The long and short

of it was, he couldn't stand bein' tied by the leg no longer. He

thought how she would glide through the water, that great ship, of the

lands she'd visit, of--Laviny!" he cried sharply, as with a gasp, she

fell back on the pillow.

"You hadn't ought to act so," he expostulated; "you know he wa'n't

marked the way he was fer nothin' with that little spot on his left

cheek under the eye. His mother marked him that way before ever he was

born, and we often spoke of its bein' jest the shape of the continent

of Africky; and it's to Africky--"

A hoarse rattle drowned his words. He peered more closely at her with

his aged eyes. And at that moment a faint thin wail came up from the

other side of the bed.

He seized her arm while his tears fell on her wrist, which never

quivered under their hot touch. "Laviny!" he cried, "Oh, he hadn't

ought to have done it! Don't leave me alone with _it_--the little

one!" he shrieked. "Why didn't you tell me it was here? Oh, Laviny,

Laviny girl!"

But Lavina Beckett paid no heed. She had embarked for a stranger port

and over stormier seas than any her husband had dared. The sound of

the old man's sobs brought a woman to the door. Her figure surged with

fat. One of her teeth projected when her face was in repose. She

hastily approached the bed, but even she was awed.

"Don't make sech a noise," she said finally. "It ain't no use. You

can't call her back now. If you could've managed to bring _him_, it

would've been different likely. But you didn't. You never did manage,

I guess, to do anything you set out to."

But the old man paid no heed. He sat with his hands on his knees, his

head dropped forward, inefficient, old, broken down by grief, and a

thin low wail for the second time broke the silence.

CHAPTER II

THE WAITING OF WOMEN

Lavina Beckett lay in the front room of the old house, and people

passing glanced askance at the closed blinds. Recent death inhabits a

place more completely than life, and Lavina's personality seemed to

lurk in the panels of the grey door, in the branches of the lilac bush,

and even extended to the road.

All through the day neighbours came to offer condolences. Then,

shrewd-faced, with the marks of child-bearing, hard work and a harsh

climate in every line, these respectable wives of lobstermen took their

way home in little groups. In the house they had borne themselves

somewhat awkwardly, and once outside, their pity for the dead woman

appeared tinged with resentment. Little was known about her at the

Point.

It was after nightfall when a woman wearing a shawl over her head,

knocked timidly at old David's door. A boy of six years clung to her

skirts. When she was admitted, she slipped furtively into the room of

death, and the boy, with difficulty restraining his tears, waited for

her in the kitchen. He was afraid of the fat woman with her face bound

round with a handkerchief, who was washing dishes at the sink. She

made a great clatter. When she stepped to a cupboard, the candle threw

an exaggerated portrait of her on the opposite wall. The ends of the

cloth around her face stood up in two points, like horns; from between

her flabby cheeks, projected a nose like a beak. A fork in her hand

became, to his gaze, the size of a pitchfork. Once, when she passed

near him, she held back her skirts, muttering under her breath; and he

saw the same aversion in her eyes that he knew to be in his own, save

that in her look there was a mingling of scorn and in his, a mingling

of fright. It was a strange look to be directed toward a child, but it

was one with which the boy was familiar. Presently his mother

reappeared and they went out again. She walked very rapidly and now

and then she wiped her eyes with a corner of her apron. The boy had to

run to keep up with her. When they struck into a rugged path leading

to the lighthouse, he paused and looked back.

Under the light of a full moon the Beckett house shone with a quite

peculiar radiance. And yes, there it was! as they had said. It stood

near the tumble-down cow-shed. The funeral was to take place in a

village some miles distant, and an early start in the morning was

necessary. The undertaker had gone, but the driver, with the hearse,

would remain the night. He was eating his supper now, waited upon by

the ugly woman. Meanwhile it stood out in the yard and the moonlight

glinted on the four sable urns that decorated its corners, and sparkled

on its glass sides and peeped between the black hangings without

hindrance. The moon, indeed, to the child's thought, seemed to be as

curious as he. Beads of perspiration started to his forehead, and,

grasping his mother's skirt, he stumbled on at her side.

As the boy had pictured, in the Beckett kitchen the driver of the

hearse was eating his supper, washing it down with a drink of whiskey.

Then he disposed himself as best he could on two chairs, and fell

asleep. Nora Gage finished the preserves the man had left on his

plate, ate a quarter of a pie and went to bed in a room conveniently

near the pantry. By eleven o'clock old David was alone.

He entered the front room, and very softly approached the coffin. The

light from a candle wavered over the dead face. Leaning his elbow on

the coffin lid and his chin in his hand, old David inspected the face.

The first shock past, he wondered that he did not feel more poignant

sorrow, but there was something almost impersonal in Lavina's

expression. There were violet shadows under the eyes, and the lashes,

as they rested on the cheek, were somewhat separated. The small mouth

was closed rigidly, the cheeks showed hollows. Young as she was, her

delicate feminine countenance already bore upon it the world-old

legend--_The waiting of women_. The look did not belong to her

individually--twenty years of life could not have branded it there. It

was inherited from the first woman who had loved,--the first mother.

It was the woman-look, and David recognized it. But he was almost

seventy years old, and he sank into a chair and was soon nodding.

The candle spluttered, and the faint significance of the woman's days

on earth for the last time blended confusedly with the silence, the

night, the wind blowing in the moonlit sedge-grass. When we bury the

body we cut off the last light of a jewel already dimmed by death.

In life Lavina had borne about her a faint suggestion of learning; it

was said that on arriving at the Point she had brought with her a box

of books. Some of the neighbours believed that she had been a

schoolteacher; others that she had been reared by a relative who dealt

in books, since the volumes she brought were all new. But Lavina never

told them anything, and nothing was known about her, save that she came

from a village thirty miles distant, which was on no railroad.

A gust of wind flickered the flame of the candle and a drop of tallow

fell on the coffin.

Was it this supposed learning that had attracted Thomas Beckett, or the

coiled braids of hair, or the nose, the nostrils of which used to

expand slightly, as is the way with people who feel things keenly; or

was it, perhaps, the sensitive hands, crossed now so patiently? In any

case, whatever the attraction, it had ceased to hold Thomas after the

third month; and once more in the grip of his black mood, he had been

seen striding over the rocks, with the hair clinging to his forehead

and his eye glowing as if from drink; and finally came the night when

the old man and the young woman, both sleeping now so quietly, knew

that they were deserted.

Again the draught from the window reduced the light of the candle to a

mere blue tongue, and a shadow fell across the woman's face. It

blotted out the lips which had been on the point of revealing their

tender secret when the blow fell; it still further shrouded the eyes,

which through the succeeding weary months gazing from the windows of

the alien house, had noted the rags of mist that went floating by and

vanished--like human hopes. It blotted out the hands, eloquent of

agony, heavy with ungiven caresses. For an instant the shadows

obliterated the whole slight frame that until recently had carried

beneath its heart another life. Suddenly the candle flame brightened,

and simultaneously a cry, small, sharp, almost impudent, broke the

silence.

The old man started from his sleep. The cry was repeated. A smile so

triumphant that it was sly, spread itself across his wrinkled visage.

Seizing the candle which lit the room of death, he trotted into the

room of the creature just born.

Outside, the hearse stood in the moonlight. And over yonder at the

lighthouse a boy tossed restlessly on the bed beside his mother. In

his imagination he still saw the hearse and it filled him with dull

questioning. Lifting himself, he laid a hand on the shoulder of his

drowsing parent.

'Why were they going to take the woman away?' he asked.

'Because--why because it was necessary.'

'Were they going to put her in the ground?

'Yes, that also was necessary.'

'But wasn't it dark under the ground, and wouldn't she be afraid?'

The mother sighed in her sleep.

The boy regarded her for an instant. Then propping his head on his

hand, he fell to listening to the beat of the surf. Gradually his

fears ceased, for each silver-lipped wave seemed to be speaking not

alone to him, but to the dead woman.

"_Rest, rest,_" they seemed to say, "_rest, rest._"

CHAPTER III

THE SUN

Old David Beckett, though he never spoke on the subject, was haunted by

memories of a childhood passed amid scenes of refinement and wealth.

He had a hazy impression that his father had been a gentleman of local

distinction in a Canadian town. However, with his father's death had

come a change in the fortunes of the family. Its members had drifted

apart, and David himself, at the time scarcely more than a child, had

gone to Philadelphia. Year after year he had worked in the car shops

until the lead in the paint had affected his health. This break-down

had occurred after his wife's death, in his fiftieth year. Reduced in

strength he had come to the Point where one of the owners of the shops,

in recognition of his long and faithful service, had given him a little

house and a bit of land. This change David had welcomed, but it had

engendered in his son Thomas a brooding discontent which had increased

with the years.

Brought up in Philadelphia until his tenth year, Thomas Beckett had

received a rudimentary training in the public schools, and this

training, after coming to the Point, he had managed to eke out with

haphazard reading. But the cheerless surroundings had fostered in him

a tendency to indulge fits of melancholy. Without visible cause, he

would become taciturn. When he was twenty-one his father urged him to

marry and settle down, but domestic life had small attraction for

Thomas, and it was a surprise to the old man when he finally acted on

the suggestion. At the time of his marriage the young lobsterman was

thirty years old, tall and broad shouldered, with bold intelligent eyes

gazing out from beneath heavy brows, and a moustached lip that, as he

spoke, lifted slightly, showing the tips of the white teeth. One raw

day he had sailed away from the Point with a cargo of lobsters, and a

fortnight later had returned with the meek and fragile Lavina.

During the short period of her wedded life the young wife had

contributed to the house of the father and son an air of comfort.

Geraniums had bloomed at the windows and the curtains of the front room

had been kept white; all the beds had been covered with bright

patch-work quilts and the dishes had been washed as soon as used and

arranged in gleaming rows in the cupboard. But from the hour of

Thomas's desertion, Lavina had relaxed her care of the house. Now,

after her death, the change in it was complete. The curtains were

dingy, the plants dead, fish-heads from the dog's dish littered the

kitchen floor and flies buzzed about the rich messes Nora Gage was

constantly preparing for her own consumption. The deterioration in the

home suggested a picture by Hogarth.

David Beckett was bewildered. He would have preferred absolute

solitude to the presence of Nora Gage, but the fat woman had

established herself with the intention of remaining and he was too old

and too ineffectual to know how to get rid of her. Often, from a

distance, he would stare at the house with a look of indecision, then,

with an oath, he would start on a rapid trot for the kitchen. But once

in the presence of the woman, his courage forsook him. With one glance

from her little crevice eyes, Nora dominated him.

However, she had one virtue. Though she ignored the appeal of hanging

buttons and refused to patch his clothes, she fed him. For that

matter, it was her custom to feed every living thing that came under

her notice, the dog, the chickens, even flies. For the flies she had

been known to scatter sugar grains, leaning heavily on a substantial

elbow to watch the progress of the tiny meal. To old David's food she

gave especial attention. His teeth suggested isolated stumps in a

clearing; therefore she prepared soft foods for him, porridges and

soups, and, while he ate, she was wont to watch him. Her jaws would

move in sympathy and in profound contemplation she would even lick her

lips.

On Sundays Nora rolled out of bed at an early hour, and, with her

prayer book clasped in her pudgy fingers and her too plump bust visibly

undulating, she proceeded by slow stages to Old Harbour, where she

attended both early mass and vespers in the ancient Catholic church.

This church was none too well thought of by the majority of the

townspeople, who in the latter years had turned Protestant. Though

placed solemnly in the very centre of the town, the edifice was

entirely nautical in character, and many were the sympathetic

quiverings of its bell when there was a storm off Pemoquod. It seemed

to be sounding a requiem for its invisible congregation of sailormen of

every port and clime. Perhaps it was the sight of an occasional

sea-faring stranger with a bold look in his eyes that attracted Nora.

Or perhaps it was the nearness of a certain little eating-house in a

side street, owned by a friend, Katherine Fry.

The hours not occupied in divine worship, Nora was accustomed to spend

with Katherine in a room curtained off from the public gaze. There,

the one buttressed with unwholesome fat, the eyes playing in her

countenance the part of little, gleaming, deep-driven nails, the other,

lank as a skeleton, in a shawl the fringe of which suggested her own

cookery, the friends were wont to regale themselves, Nora with rich

cakes and pastry, Katherine with the quarters and dimes her customer

unwillingly relinquished to her. Quarrels were frequent, for each had

a spiteful understanding of the other's vice; but greed united them.

"I tell ye," old David would remark when of a Sunday he had undisputed

possession of his lonely grey old house and with Zarah Patch could

enjoy to the full the pleasures of a pipe before the kitchen ingle--a

pleasure denied him during the week--"I tell ye, Zary, I thank the Lord

Nora has religious inclinations! As for me," he would add, hanging his

head with a sudden change of mood, "I'm old and filled with wickedness;

the wickedness of the world has got to the very marrow of my bones. I

ain't fit to bring up no child, Zary."

However, he did bring up the infant literally by hand. Puny, touching,

defenceless, the tiny creature, surrounded from the moment of its birth

with these oddly unfavourable conditions, asserted at once its

independence. It screamed and squirmed every time Nora Gage took it

up, so that the care of it devolved entirely upon the grandfather. But

far from complaining, he was secretly flattered by this preference.

"She feels the tie of blood," he would explain, "but don't you mind,

Nora, she'll outgrow these little ways." The woman, however, laughed

straight in his face. She was not particularly anxious that the baby

should outgrow them.

The infant early became a tyrant. She was not a very pretty child.

From beneath a high rounded forehead peered forth two eyes dark and

restless. They had the furtive look seen in the eyes of some animals,

save that the pupils had a way of expanding suddenly with inquiry.

Even before she could speak, her crowing had a strong note of

interrogation. "Eee?" she would pipe, raising imperceptible eyebrows,

and the old man, as well as he could for chuckling, would answer in the

same cryptic language. She had, moreover, a very amusing and energetic

way of creeping.

When the times for her feeding arrived, she was always close beside the

door; and there old David found her when, big silver watch in hand, he

came hastening up from the dory. He carried the odour of the lobsters,

and before he could do anything else he must wash his hands. Then the

bottle must be scalded and rinsed and the milk warmed. All the

wrinkles of his face drew together, such was the care with which he

performed these operations; and eager-eyed, occasionally fretting if he

were late or particularly slow, the infant watched him from her place

on the floor. Presently he lifted her; then what a picture of peace!

With both hands she clutched the bottle and a soft gurgling, similar to

the purring of a cat, filled the room. She laughed, and the look of

rapturous content which filled her face was reflected in the

countenance of the grandfather. They looked oddly, touchingly alike.

Occasionally it was necessary for him to draw the bottle away in order

that she might take breath, and at such times she either pursued it

with her rosy, clinging mouth, or, being partially satisfied, turned to

thrust her fingers between his lips or to pull his beard. Weary as he

was from the labour that had occupied him since four in the morning,

nothing could have prevailed upon him to relinquish these ministrations

to his granddaughter.

When she was nine months old, he had her christened in the Catholic

church before a figure of St. Anthony, which seemed to his anxious mind

to be of a friendly mien. But it was with no idea of turning her over

to the church. Her religion when she grew up should be a thing of her

own choosing. Meanwhile he hearkened to the persuasions of Nora Gage,

and the child was baptized Rachel Beckett in honour of his dead wife.

After that event, however, the housekeeper lapsed into her former state

of indifference; and, neglected on the one hand, and foolishly indulged

on the other, the child's life flowed on until her fifth year. When

she was five years old a change dawned for her. In the care of the boy

from the lighthouse she went to the district school, where she was

enrolled as a pupil.

Lizzie Goodenough never abbreviated her son's name. She called him

boldly André Garins. But when he gave this name at school, the older

boys put tongue in cheek. He was an exceedingly handsome lad, with a

woodsy grace. Moreover, his ears were slightly pointed like a fawn's;

nor did the likeness end there, for his eyes under the thick mat of

hair had a wild and impenetrable look and his soft arched lips seemed

formed for other speech than that of human beings. When addressed, he

would either twist his fingers in a kind of wordless agony, or take

fleetly to his heels. He was considered an "innocent" by the folk of

the Point.

He led Rachel to the school, her tiny cold hand resting noncommittally

in his, and left her stranded before the teacher's desk. But that

brisk person frightened the child and she became as restless as a

little trapped animal. She refused to learn her letters, she refused

to learn to count; André Garins, stealthily on the watch, was ashamed

of her. But one day she heard the teacher explaining a point in

geography by means of a map on the wall and her eyes suddenly dilated.

All at once those monotonous recitations, to which she was wont to shut

her ears, those garbled descriptions of mountains, oceans, and

climates, assumed a startling significance. In that map grimed by

smoke and the breath of generations of children, in that square of

painted canvas, with its spots of blue for the water, its spots of

yellow and pink for the land, its black veins for rivers, and its fuzzy

lines, like caterpillars, for the mountains, she beheld what was an

actual vision of the actual world. And this brilliancy of the

imagination, this power to touch with life and colour any fact that

penetrated her brain at all, proved to be a special gift. But she was

too young to understand the liberation that comes through books.

The schoolroom seemed to her the one point of stagnation in an active

world. She longed to the point of tears for the sight of trees of

which she was temporarily deprived, and for the smell of the outdoor

air. The teacher finally in despair left her alone. With something

disconcerting in her extraordinarily intelligent eyes, she gazed about

her at the other pupils as if she dimly recognised herself as belonging

to a distinct and lonely species. Perhaps some subtle power of

reasoning underneath the dark hair which grew in a point on her

forehead, revealed to her that their needs were not her needs. As

instinctively as a plant, she selected from the atmosphere surrounding

her what she most required for growth; and idleness offered opportunity

for observations, shrewd, penetrating, constant.

Lizzie Goodenough's son was the one child admitted to her friendship.

In winter she permitted him to drag her to and from school on his sled,

and in summer she allowed him to string thimble-berries for her on a

long grass, which could be smuggled under the desk out of sight of the

teacher and eaten at odd moments, when one stood in such dire need of

refreshment in the dry country of learning. But, strictly speaking,

she had no companions.

For her grandfather a warm strong love beat in her little heart. Often

she would clasp him about the neck with one thin arm, and with the

other hand against his cheek, would gaze intently upon him until a

simultaneous gleam of laughter shot into both their faces. Then she

would nestle to him, quivering with a divine mirth which was the mask

of diviner tears.

For Nora Gage, Rachel entertained a silent dislike that expressed

itself in manoeuvres to keep out of her way. If Nora entered a room,

Rachel, if possible, left it. If the housekeeper, in her flapping

slippers, shuffled out into the yard and cast herself down on the seat

beneath the apple tree, where Rachel was playing, the child immediately

gathered up her pebbles and shells and gravely sought another place.

She spoke no oftener to the housekeeper than was necessary, and when

she did speak, a weight of scorn trembled in her voice as if some

feeling were silently gathering power. Nora Gage looked upon her with

her little eyes, which were shrewd and meditative, exactly as a pig's

are shrewd and meditative, and was apparently indifferent. But it was

inconceivable that she did not hate her.

A part of a battered wreck and a figure-head were, in the truest sense,

Rachel's companions. Both were rooted fast where they had come ashore,

but before they had reached that expanse of sand, the sea had had its

way with them. They were by no means parts of the same craft, but

torn, hurled, gnawed, they had been brought, by the rollicking mood of

the ocean, past the fierce skirting of rocks outside and dashed there

together on the shore of the bay, to become the playmates of a little

child.

Timber by timber the wreck had been washed small, and sometimes after a

storm streams of rusty water that resembled blood trickled from its

various bolts. Rachel, climbing out upon the wreck, sometimes felt the

shallow water sucking between its timbers urging it to put to sea

again; and, conscious of the tremble of eagerness in the poor maimed

thing, she would pat the beams in passionate sympathy, and lay her

cheek to them. Often she tried to dislodge the great hulk by placing

her shoulder against it, and once, when the sea sucked off a plank and

the tide flung it on the shore several rods away, she spent the

following morning in hauling the dissevered portion back to the wreck

and trying to hammer it into position. There was in her a curious

susceptibility to the pathos of things.

Here and there about the wreck vestiges of paint appeared, and a faint

assemblage of letters formed the name _Defender_ on what had been the

prow. This paint Rachel brought to temporary brightness by rubbing it

with a corner of her apron dipped in sea water. The sand that clogged

the ribs of the wreck she removed daily with a shovel. In brief, no

waning sovereign, already in the clutch of death could have been waited

upon by a trusty handmaiden with more patience and love. In her day

she had sailed many a stormy sea, that ship, and without doubt had made

many a difficult port; but now in the days of her nothingness to be

loved with a love passing that of sailor or captain (for in such

affection there is ever something of the seaman's pride in the

capabilities of his craft), to be loved, forsooth, with a deep feminine

tenderness,--surely, if comfort were possible to those broken bolts and

spars, the wreck was comforted. And, testifying to the gallantry

inherent in every timber, all that remained of her responded to the

thrill of the child's spirit. It was as if the wreck heard commands

summoning her to deeds of spiritual daring. The stumps of her masts

she lifted to the sky with an air of defiance, she resisted the

encroachments of the sand; and in the upward sweep of her lines toward

her broken bow, there was indomitable courage and pride invincible.

Valour answered valour and the sun shone gently on the incongruous

playmates, on the wreck whose earthly voyages were over, and on the

child whose life's journey had scarcely begun.

For the figure-head, Rachel entertained a somewhat different sentiment.

It was evidently a bit of German carving, and represented a robust

goddess with face lifted to the sky. Full waves of hair blew back from

the face; the chin was gone, the nose was gone, but in the gaze of the

eyes was blank, unquestioning triumph. She was clad in swirling

drapery and a breastplate of overlapping scales, and in the one arm

that remained to her she carried a sceptre tipped with a diminutive

crown. Rachel admired the way the figure-head stood proudly erect,

even strained backwards, and sometimes grasping a stick, she paced the

sands in grotesque imitation of the wooden woman. But more often she

sat before her lost in silent contemplation. She saw her fastened to

the prow of a vessel, "great-kneed, deep-breasted," with lips and eyes

stung by the spray; she saw her bowing deep into the trough of a wave,

her gaze as she sank still intrepidly lifted to heaven; and she saw her

rise again, dripping, all gilded by the light of the sun. The

exhilaration of life and hope were still in the figure-head, wrought

into her with the carving, it would seem, and these qualities her later

experience in the brine had heightened to a kind of glory, so that now,

unmindful that she was stranded, she stared out at the dawns and the

evenings and the far-away twinkling stars with the same undaunted look

of conquest.

This look, branded upon the figure-head and smitten into her round

staring pupils, had its effect upon the child. Often and often when

there was a storm off Pemoquod and the green water ran fifty feet high

with the spray twice as high, grinding and pounding over the rocks and

even entering the bay, until its strong death-fingers reached her very

feet, Rachel stared at the waters while a fierce exultation swelled her

little heart.

Persistent in her childish desires, imperious when they were crossed,

at all other times gentle and tractable, Rachel up to her ninth year

comprehended no force superior to that of which she was conscious in

herself. Her grandfather she could sway by a word, and there were ways

she knew of compelling Nora Gage; as for André, he was a slave, to be

ruled by kindness for the most part and blows when necessary, blows

aimed straight at his wild dark face. In her domain she tolerated no

insubordination. But one night the pettiness of this domain and its

purely human limits were revealed to her.

When whiskey got the better of Captain Daniels at the lighthouse, and

this happened occasionally, Lizzie Goodenough, with a strong arm, could

draw the oil and tend the beacon. If truth were told, it was because

he had recognised her possibilities for usefulness in this direction,

that the captain, sixteen years before, had taken pity on the girl and

her newly-born infant. At the time he was just recovering from what he

termed "a bad spell," and Lizzie appealed to him as capable and sturdy;

moreover, she was very handsome, with a frown set squarely between her

brows and an ominous light in her glance. He had never married her.

Now that her boy had grown large enough to go on watch at a pinch, the

arrangement was even more advantageous.

On the night in question, Rachel, after much worrying of her

grandfather and Lizzie, obtained their consent to go on watch with

André. She mounted with him to the lantern.

The immense corrugated lenses flashed diamond tints of inconceivable

brilliancy. There, in rims of living colour, in circles of crystal,

that white gush of light that flooded the rocks below, was born. There

was the glitter and clash of its nightly cradle. The tower creaked and

the sea thundered like cannon, ghostly finger-tips tapped now and then

on the glass; a night bird, allured by the radiance, beat out its

brains on the costal.

Presently André descended to the whitewashed room just below the

lantern and Rachel stumbled after him.

"The plunger won't need windin' again till morning," he told her; "we

can rest now."

But Rachel, squeezing her hands together, sat bolt upright, given over

to a mighty, new, inspiring sensation. She was intoxicated with a

sense of the power of man. Finally she laughed aloud; then she glanced

at André. But, forgetful of all responsibility, the lad sat with his

head against the wall, while the breath passed peacefully between his

lips. Instantly Rachel was on her feet. She trembled all over. How

about the ships at sea now! He could just talk big about the

lighthouse, but he couldn't keep it,--not he! Then on a sudden she

craned toward him, and from the vital, virile, little face the gleam of

anger disappeared, for on the lad's forehead, beneath his mat of hair,

and on the chin where it jutted in below the mouth, she saw that look

of helplessness with which a relentless Fate sometimes brands her

children.

Actuated by an almost maternal impulse, Rachel divested herself of her

bit of shawl and laid it over the shoulders of the sleeping boy. Then

she resumed the watch, and with every hour ticked forth by the clock on

the wall, her sense of responsibility increased till the flame in the

lantern was duplicated by another flame alight in a little human heart.

It was toward daylight when she stepped out on the balcony which

encircled the tower just below the lantern. But the world she looked

out upon was no longer the world with which she was familiar. At that

hour a mysterious, quiet influence was abroad. Far below to the

northward she descried her grandfather's house, grey, closed, silent;

and she saw the silver loop of the bay. Inland the pine trees were

arranged in dark, meditative groups, and the rocks, no longer

formidable, in that wan half-light appeared like cattle that had

trooped down to the water to drink. Here and there, perched on the

loftiest crags, were the sentinel crows. These, solitary, motionless,

accentuated the universal air of waiting.

All at once she held her breath. Across the clear blue of the sky lay,

like lines of smoke, two or three filmy clouds. From a light pink

these were turning to rose. Gradually the stars, one by one,

paled--went out. Then an abrupt happening. A curve of crimson

appeared above the horizon; this widened until it resembled an eye;

then a full glowing countenance swung clear of the ocean and rays

sprang from it. The whole sky began to blush. The ocean, a moment

before a dull grey, flushed, and tiny ripples covered its surface;

ships, hitherto invisible, appeared on its gently agitated bosom. And

this infusion of vitality reached inland, quivering to gold in the

tree-tops, trembling to crimson in the coarse grass, invading with

radiance the most secret recess of the tiniest shell on the sand. The

whole shore was illumined with the lavender and gold of the dawn; and

simultaneously, from every quarter, rose the crows with their raucous

_caw caw_ in greeting to the oncoming day.

Suddenly through the weary frame of the child surged tides of

exultation; it was as if, after the dreary watch, the sun rose in her.

She stretched out her arms, and, for an instant, the sun and the child

stared at each other. Then its fierce glow overpowered her, its fiery

shafts blinded her; and covering her eyes, she stumbled below,

whimpering, conscious of a dull ache, a shame, a sullen fear which she

could not comprehend. Something hitherto unconquered was vanquished in

her heart, so that never afterwards did she move with quite the same

feeling of supremacy.

CHAPTER IV

AMID BLEAK SURROUNDINGS

Pemoquod lighthouse is on a point projecting into the ocean. Standing

in the lantern of the lighthouse and looking toward the east, one

beholds the ocean with nothing between him and Europe except an

inconsiderable island or two; looking toward the west, one beholds

John's Bay. On the ocean side of the Point is a long line of broken

cliffs ranged for a certain distance in tiers, like the seats in a vast

amphitheatre. Then abruptly this formation ends and the cliffs tower

up into separate crags,--monsters that forever contemplate the sea with

rage. There between the water and the rocks is a constant contest.

The rocks are like giant animals; the sinuous waves, leaping and

roaring, like unearthly reptiles. Between the rock-beasts and the

wave-reptiles is unabating feud. After each conflict the waves seem to

hiss with fury, the rocks to drip with gore by reason of the masses of

red seaweed with which they are covered over.

It is curious to rise from a seat in the amphitheatre where you have

been lulled by the light touch of the wind and the soft lapping of the

waves, to contemplate two or three rods beyond this scene of mighty

wrath. It is more curious still to stroll through expanses of

sedgegrass to the other side of the Point and behold the bay. A quiet

little bay it seems, with its diversified edge of sandy beach and

tumble of small rocks, with its lobstermen's sheds clinging to the

shore and further inland the houses. From the bay only the blank walls

of these houses can be seen, for the women, with reason, regard the sea

as an enemy to be ignored during peaceful indoor hours, and hardly a

window of the modest dwellings looks toward the water.

During the summer and part of the winter, the bay is sprinkled far and

wide with the sails of fishing dories. Into this pocket of the sea,

always conveniently open, nature brings food for man in the form of

marine creatures,--lobsters, crabs, and a clutter of fish. The bay,

with its air of mild domesticity, is man's domain; the sea outside,

God's alone.

Never the less the region in winter is harsh and unfavoured. The wind

pipes down the chimneys and clamours on the crags and fairly howls in

giant witch-fashion on the ocean. The people go about their duties

with shoulders shrugged up, with purple noses and freezing toes. In

the houses, they can scarcely hear one another speak on the windiest

days, and conversation is impossible anywhere near the Point; this life

fosters in them a solitariness of the soul.

With motley garments, sometimes quilts and shawls, strapped and buckled

around them, the few who pursue lobster-fishing as a vocation fuss

around their pounds or, out on the bay, haul their pots and swear.

Their oaths mingle with the gale and the dashing waters and even freeze

in mid air to come to land later and form icicles. At least, this was

Rachel's fancy, and when she saw the bits of ice at the window ledges,

she reached forth an arm and plucking them, dissolved them in her soft

warm mouth, as if she would dissolve at the same time her grandfather's

probable wrath. This wrath, being so justified, however, had something

righteous in it, which Rachel was not slow to admit. Certainly it was

not right that a man's living should be so hard a thing to win, and

what was there for it but to exorcise these demons of wind and tide

with language harsh enough to fit the occasion?

David Beckett, despite his gentleness, was a prodigious oath maker;

indeed, some of his oaths were so picturesque as to have come into

general circulation, a fact which afforded Rachel not a little

satisfaction. To be able to invent such oaths, she felt instinctively,

required an imagination of no uncertain order.

In winter her cheeks grew ruddy from the wind, tears caused by the cold

sometimes stood in her eyes and the skin on the backs of her hands

cracked until the knuckles bled. But she was very hardy and healthy.

She had a fondness for mingling the impressions of form and colour and

scent which bespoke a very sensuous temperament.

The old man's delight in her was boundless. Whenever she approached

him a wonderful tenderness illuminated his face; his blue eyes sparkled

and a set of wrinkles, entirely new, shot out from their corners like

rockets. On her part the child returned his feeling with a depth of

affection, startling and almost tragic in one so young. She seemed to

give the old man something of the vigour of childhood, while into her

passed a little of the seriousness of age.

They were constant companions. Sometimes in order not to be separated

from her, David took her out in the dory. There, while the boat rose

and sank and rose again, and Zarah Patch's nephew phlegmatically set or

hauled the pots, the old man sought to answer her numerous questions,

suggested for the most part, by her chance study of the family Bible.

"Does God raise up the lobsters?" she asked one day, "the lobsters we

kill."

The old man grinned. "No, I never heard that he did," he answered;

"lobsters ain't much 'count save as they feed man, I guess," he added.

The child relapsed into a sulky silence. After that she began putting

back into the sea half-dead fish that she found on the shore and

patiently straightening out the legs of flies discovered in webs.

"It's man alone that's saved," she thought with a pang.

CHAPTER V

THE BARNACLE

When she was ten years old Rachel left the country school, and when she

was eighteen she graduated from the High School in Old Harbour. Her

course of study in that institution had been protracted by reason of

the frequent spells of bad weather which, for weeks together, had kept

her a prisoner at the Point. These interruptions she had accepted

philosophically, for she had preferred to gain knowledge in an

unhampered fashion, to look about her, to ask questions, to read the

books of her own choosing. She was an exceedingly headstrong creature

and had anyone wished to manage her he would have experienced great

difficulty. However, apparently, no one had such an unreasonable wish.

Her lean little face was charming. With its broad forehead and high

cheek bones it suggested a type of the Renaissance. The expression in

her eyes was candid and thoughtful. Her nose was straight, her upper

lip short, her mouth full and handsome in line, though, in meaning,

asleep. Activity of the mind gives character to the eye, activity of

the emotions individuality to the lips, and Rachel Beckett had not

lived emotionally. She was still chained heavily by her youth, for

youth has its shackles as well as age.

It was about this time that André Garins approached her with an

important proposition. He came leaping down the path from the

lighthouse and found her seated in the lobsterman's door. In the

kitchen Nora could be heard scolding. Occasionally the words were

drowned in guttural sobs.

"It's her pork pie," Rachel explained. "I got to reading and the fat

just bubbled up before I knew. Now I'm going to Old Harbour to get her

another," she added in a louder voice, "Want to come along?"

André nodded. He had attained his full height without losing the

slimness of adolescence. "There's something I want to talk to you

about," he said shyly.

But he did not broach the subject at once; instead he said tentatively

as the two breasted the high wind which was all alive with the tang of

the sea, and in which the girl's garments rattled like the rigging of a

ship, "It's good of you to get her another pork pie; why do you do it?"

"Because," Rachel answered with spirit, "people once in a while ought

to have what they want--if it's only pork pie."

André regarded her beautiful face with dull curiosity. "Then you're

not doing it because you're sorry for her?" he asked.

"No," she answered shortly; "principle."

But the abstract had no meaning for André; he always thought in

straight lines and his thoughts were convertible into actions. Now he

took up the matter which had brought him to her.

"Mother thinks you and I could set up shop together," he said. "She

thinks I can paint what are called 'souvenirs'; you know I paint very

well, and you could take charge of the candy and fruit. She thinks we

might get quite a little trade from the hotel people all about here, if

we opened a shop in that unused barn of Shattuck's."

The proposition appealed to Rachel mightily. Now that the schooldays

were past she found herself much too frequently in the presence of Nora

Gage and quarrels were constant. If the young girl had had her way she

would have bundled the so-called housekeeper out of the door and have

done the work herself, but old David was fastidious in the matter of

her hands and cherished the idea of one day seeing her a "lady."

André's plan seemed to offer scope for her energy, she hailed it

joyfully. A week later the youthful shop keepers were established in

their odd quarters.

The situation of the unused barn was magnificent. It stood on the top

of a high turfy hill which overlooked both the ocean and the bay. On

going around it a narrow path, almost hidden by the tall grass, was

discovered, and this path led directly to that bit of the bay shore

where were the figure-head and the wreck. The door of the barn

commanded the road. There was something in the bleakness of the

situation that took hold on the fancy. The barn had long been an

object of popular interest. It was toned by the weather to the

beautiful grey of a dove's wing. It leaned lightly to one side. Its

two front windows were like empty eye-sockets. As one approached it,

climbing around the crumbling foundation of what years before had been

a house, he imagined it the retreat of birds of prey.

The only steeds housed here were the horses of the wind, in the pauses

of the storms that swept the Point. The barn was supposed to be

haunted. Therefore the scene that greeted the first curious visitors,

struck pleasantly on their sight.

A bit of sail-cloth bearing the inscription: _Souvenirs And

Confectionery_ appeared over one window, and a little trail of smoke

issued from the other. Just inside the door was Rachel. She stood

behind an improvised counter of new boards on which was ranged a file

of golden oranges. Oranges and girl, how they lit the gloom! When not

engaged in waiting on a customer, and her duties in this direction were

of the lightest, Rachel made a pretence of sewing, though oftener than

not the sewing was abandoned for a book. The range of her reading at

this time was remarkable. Like her father, she read everything that

came her way with a kind of tragic eagerness. Frequently closing the

book and leaning her elbows on the counter, she would gaze straight

ahead, while the questioning look deepened in her eyes. In the

background where a ray of light fell André painted the lighthouse in

garish colours on the bosom of a heaven-tinted shell.

What a pair they were, to be sure! What a bouquet of innocence, youth

and utterly worthless endeavour!

The enterprise brought in little, though during July and August people

came from the Ocean View House and even from remoter hotels on outlying

islands. At this André laughed in his heart, but after the novelty had

worn off, Rachel was less pleased. The money that she earned bought

her a new dress and hat; but it was not sufficient to lighten the

burden on her grandfather's shoulders. Unable longer to bear the

hardships of lobster-fishing, old David had sold his pots. Taking part

of his scant savings he had bought four cows. He now peddled milk from

one end of the Point to the other. Rachel sometimes looked at him with

sudden fear, though their poverty she realized but vaguely, never

having known anything different. She mended his clothes and lavished

upon him every care. She opened her heart to him, and in spirit he

dwelt there as in a wide, sunny room. But, though he knew her heart,

neither he nor anyone else, knew what was passing in her mind.

Sometimes with a vigorous motion she would clasp her hands behind her

head while she stared through the doorway of the barn; then she would

slip away, taking the winding path to the bay, and remain there for

hours.

The groups of rocks on the bay shore differed from those fronting the

ocean. They were more sad than threatening in form and were covered

thickly with seaweed, like enormous heads with hair. In this hair

sparkled iridescent drops left by the receding tide; these drops

resembled jewels. The rocks, indeed, were decked like the heads of

women, and by reason of the long tresses of seaweed that trailed from

them and that undulated on the surface of the water, an uneasy

restlessness seemed to pervade them.

Rachel would eye them gloomily: then, flinging herself down, she would

observe the various forms of life in the little pools of water where

floated crabs and jellyfish. In the prominent eyes of the crab she saw

the desire for its prey. Looking upward, attracted by the sinister

screech of gulls, she saw them fluttering about the nest of a

sanderling which they pillaged of its eggs. Letting her glance fall

again she studied the little bell-shaped barnacles, like tiny huts,

which everywhere adhered to the rocks in settlements. As the water

approached, one after another of the doors of these wee huts opened and

a hand, vaporish, white as light, reached forth and gathered in the

necessary provender. Everywhere, everything received what it needed to

sustain life. She alone was starved.

With these thoughts surging in her brain, Rachel would make her way

back to the barn. There, with cheeks puffed out, stooping over his

work, she would find André. One day when she entered the barn he

greeted her with a gleeful announcement: he had sold five little shells

and one big one during her absence. She turned away. She had often

watched the faces of the summer people: they bought the shells out of

pity for André, or perhaps, because they admired his handsome face. As

art, she suspected, the shells were nothing. Why could he not see?

"You have no ambition," she said surlily, "there are schools where one

can learn to do this sort of thing, I suppose. You ought to want to

get away and study."

Amazed, he looked up at her. "But the shells sell all right," he

remarked. "I paint well enough for that."

She made no answer and sparks of some sort glowed in her eyes. She

shook her head at him.

"You're just like a barnacle," she cried passionately, "_it_ clings to

a rock, _it_ lives in a corner; everyday when the tide comes in, _it_

opens its door and gathers in food. In the same way every morning you

wait for the city people. You open your door, you reach out your

hand--like this, and you take in the pennies. Bah! is that enough for

you?"

"Well, isn't it?" he asked, and in his eyes, as he looked at her,

dawned a certain yearning softness.

But she turned away. "Then stay on your rock," she flashed out; "I

want more."

He came up to her and laid his hand on her arm.

"What do you want?" he asked.

She looked at him and seeing tears in his eyes, she turned away

sullenly. "I don't know," she answered, "but I want life--more'n what

the sea brings me."

Then suddenly she broke from him and darted into the twilight.

CHAPTER VI

THE FIGURE-HEAD GAINS AN ADMIRER

The field where old David put the cows to pasture lay a comparatively

short distance from the house, in the direction of the bay. But

Rachel, leading a large white cow by a rope, had elected to go round by

"the barn."

"Come along, Betty," she cried, as she turned into the main road

dragging the surprised animal after her.

A dense fog obscured every landmark. Looking backward, she could just

discern the placid light of the cow's eyes below the sickle of its

horns; looking downward, she could make out her own feet and the stalks

of grass and flowers beside the road. Moisture clung to the grass in

pendant beads, and there was a fugitive flash of colour here and there

close to the ground. All else was sheeted in the white pall. Groups

of firs looked like spectres, the bushes covered with fluffs of mist

looked like phantoms; Rachel herself appeared like a ghost.

The sea hurled itself against the cliffs. Now and again when it

suspended its roar, the moaning of the fog bell could be heard. In

these intervals of comparative quiet the surging fury in the girl's

heart gave way to waves of melancholy. She had quarrelled with Nora

Gage that morning and the colour was still high in her cheeks.

Presently she came to a pause, stamping on the ground; the next moment,

however, she was moved to laughter. In a sty beside the road a group

of pigs was nozzling in a trough. One sat up and looked at her with

Nora's eyes.

Somewhat improved in humour, she went on up the road. When she came

opposite the barn, she clambered around the ruined cellar foundation,

and after tying the cow, entered the little shop. A fire had been

lighted in the battered stove and sent forth a cheerful flicker. Early

as it was, André was already at work; he was decorating a smooth

egg-shaped stone from which he had first removed its wrapping of

seaweed. He glanced up and a light leaped to his eyes. He looked at

Rachel with smiling intentness as if to satisfy himself that she had

not changed in any way over night. Finally he spoke:

"If you'd come a little sooner, Rachel, you'd have seen something."

She spread her fingers above the stove and turned her neck from side to

side with a slow and graceful movement as the heat rushed into her face.

"What would I have seen?"

Jumping from his stool, André poured some coffee from a pot into a cup;

then he offered the cup to her.

"You look cold," he said, gazing directly into her eyes; "are you

cold?" And taking her shawl, he shook the moisture from it. There was

always in his attitude toward her a kind of awe.

"What would I have seen?" she repeated without glancing at him.

"Why, a stranger was here. He'd been making a sketch of the

figure-head; he showed it to me."

"I don't see what right he had to draw it without my permission," she

murmured jealously. "Was it a good picture, André?"

The lad looked doubtful. "It was all little scratchy lines," he said.

Rachel brooded for some minutes over the stove; then she rose. "There

won't be anyone here this morning," she announced, "so I sha'n't come

back. I've got to take Betty to pasture. Buttercup--all the

others--got hold of some sorrel; they're sick."

She went to the door. The fog was so thick that it looked like cotton.

The wild roses that bloomed here and there made delicate pink patterns

on this white. From the barn the sea no longer could be heard, the

complaint of the fog bell could be caught only faintly. Overhead,

through the mysterious whiteness, could just be discerned the pale disc

of the sun. The girl made her way through the mist as through a

tangible substance. She took the path to the beach and the cow

followed her placidly, the tall wet grass striking against its sides

and its udder swinging like a pendulum. Rachel slipped along the wet

path and climbed stealthily to the top of the first rock.

There, sitting on the wreck near the figure-head, was the stranger; but

he was not sketching. Instead, his head, from which the cap had

fallen, was bent forward and he was carefully burying in the sand what

appeared to be the scraps of a letter. When he had finished this

operation a kind of humorous relief was manifest all over him. A

passenger boat steamed down the bay; a line of smoke followed it. The

vessel was invisible, but the smoke lay in the fog a trail of black.

The young man turned his head to observe it, and at that instant Rachel

started and the cow behind her made a movement.

He looked up.

Poised on the summit of the rock, with the horns of the cow up-curving

about her feet, with the fog clinging to her dress of faded blue and

undulating about her in clouds, she resembled a figure of the Virgin in

a crescent moon.

The pupils of the stranger's eyes, which were of a living, magnetic

black dashed with fiery sparks, dilated; and two perpendicular lines,

which started from the root of his nose, deepened to grooves on his

forehead. He got to his feet, his massive head with its hair thrown

back upraised toward her. Touched all over with a subjugating power, a

grace more penetrating than beauty, he stared, a sort of animal.

As for Rachel, something of his excitement was communicated to her.

For another instant she paused, held there by the mere force of his

gaze. Then she turned and descending from the rock, led the cow round

into the open space. A close observer might have seen that she wavered

slightly, like one who tastes of wine for the first time.

The spell, however, was broken for the stranger. Unconsciously, with

his lightning glance, he saw that there was a scratch on the back of

one of her hands, that their flesh was rough and that there were

freckles across her nose. She was just a strong, healthy, handsome

lass; and, with the fickleness of a child, he abruptly turned his

attention elsewhere. With excessive care he moved a small box, to

which a telephone was attached, to a position of greater safety.

Rachel watched him warily. Growing within her was an odd sense of

defiance, and this feeling triumphed finally over her natural shyness.

"Did you sketch the figure-head?" she asked all in a breath. Then a

wave of colour rose in her cheeks. She stood before him in a trance of

noble embarrassment.

"Why yes, I did," he returned. He took a book from his pocket, opened

it to a certain page and presented it to her. The book was filled, all

but that page, with drawings of little instruments.

She slowly approached leading the cow. He turned to her his face,

framed in its curling beard. "I'm a pretty poor excuse for an artist,"

he began.

"That figure-head belongs to me," she interrupted, handing the book

back.

A second time he fixed his attention upon her and two tiny stars of

laughter shot into his eyes. "Does it, indeed?" he remarked; there was

almost a caress in the words.

"Yes, my grandfather saved it and set it up here," she affirmed. She

breathed quickly and every moment her shyness and her anger deepened.

"It appears to be an interesting bit of carving." Stealing over this

great giant as he frankly studied her was something of the air of a

lazy lion. "I should say someone carved it who loved to carve," he

added. Then, with an idea of giving her a chance to recover

countenance, he considerately turned his gaze in the direction of the

bay.

"What--what are you doing now?" she asked quickly; for her spirit was

roused and it behooved her to recover dignity.

"Well, I hoped to be able to get some of those fishermen to take me out

in a boat for a certain purpose, but they can't see my signal and the

fog doesn't lift."

He seated himself on the wreck and began to touch up his drawing of the

figure-head, then he fell to making a tentative sketch of the

indistinct figures in the dories out on the water.

Had he made the slightest effort to detain her in conversation, Rachel

certainly would have turned on her heel; as it was, drawn on by her

curiosity, she moored the cow with a stone on the rope, and came nearer.

"All this is out of my line," he explained, "but I like to try my hand

at it once in a way." And, indeed, he looked hugely pleased with his

effort, as he held the paper at arm's length to study the effect.

Rachel watched him and now and then her eyes travelled to his face with

the clear dispassionate gaze of a child. His cap lay on the sand at

his feet and his dishevelled locks moved in the wind above a face that

was simple and bold. His finger-tips were stained with acid, his

clothing was a bit careless; a spray of Prince's Feather, freshly

picked, trailed from the button-hole of his coat. About them was

complete silence except for the plashing of the waves and an occasional

muffled cry from the almost invisible lobstermen. The fog wrapped them

round.

Presently he reached a point beyond which he was unable to carry his

sketch, and, abandoning it, he began turning the pages of the book at

first slowly, then with increased attention. At last he paused. His

eyes narrowed and the perpendicular wrinkle on his forehead deepened.

He read over some notes. He struck out a word here, inserted another

there; then commenced to write rapidly on the margin of the page and

for several minutes the scratching of his pencil continued. It was

apparent that like a hunter he was running down his quarry, and leaping

over many a ditch and rock in his excitement; it was apparent, too,

that he had entered a world in which woman was unknown.

Finally, Rachel's interest expressed itself in an involuntary sigh, and

he raised his head with a dawning consciousness of her presence. Tiny

drops of moisture, like diamond dust, glittered in her hair. He

studied them; then met the brightness of her oval-shaped eye.

In his turn embarrassed, he hitched his shoulders and laughed.

"I forgot that you were here," he said.

Until that moment she had not resented his indifference, but now, when

he voiced it, she felt a hot sense of chagrin. He had, she considered,

been pointedly lacking in courtesy. Moving away, she took up the rope

of the cow.

He got to his feet. "By Jove, I don't see how it happened," he said

simply.

It was the touch required. She halted and stood playing with the rope.

"I got to thinking of this," he continued, and he laid his hand on the

box to which the telephone receiver was attached. "It's something I've

been working out. I want to test it. It's a fine coast for the

purpose. Plenty of submerged rocks, I should say," and he gazed about

him.

She also swept the rolling leagues of misty emptiness, but with the

glance of one who is familiar with them, then her eyes, wistful and

unutterably intense, went to his. There was something about the life

and mentality of this man that startled and stirred her, something in

his appearance that seemed to speak of a nature unshackled, gigantic.

"I asked that boy at the old barn up the road where I could get hold of

a boat and someone to row," he continued, "but he didn't tell me."

She turned from him. "I'll take you," she volunteered, "this

afternoon."

At this the stranger showed a row of brilliant teeth. "Why

that--that's fine," he said. Once more his manner was gentle, almost

caressing.

To demonstrate his gratitude he tore from the book the sketch of the

figure-head and presented it to her.

She took it without exhibiting any emotion. Then, leading the cow, she

disappeared around a boulder. A moment later, however, she appeared on

its summit, and the cow pushed up behind her so that his first

miraculous impression was repeated.

"What time," she asked, "do you want to go?"

He moved his lips without speaking; a magical light had dawned on his

world.

"Why, about three o'clock," he answered,--pausing between the words.

And the next moment she was no longer there. The fog had closed over

the spot of the vision.

CHAPTER VII

CONCERNING ALEXANDER EMIL ST. IVES

In the make-up of this Alexander Emil St. Ives, who carried his name

like a flaunting feather, his father played small part. During the

life of the elder St. Ives, the family had lived on a farm in Rhode

Island and the father, a dour, narrow man, had laid his commands upon

the soil and had tilled it with his will as with an agricultural

implement; in bad seasons often he had been the one farmer in the

neighbourhood who harvested crops.

There were two sons. The elder boy, Edgar, resembled the father,

though built on smaller, neater lines, with a face shaped like an egg.

He had much of the father's obstinate force united to a faculty for

grasping and retaining what seemed to him worth while. The younger son

resembled the mother.

Mrs. St. Ives, timid, valiant creature, was incapable of not loving.

For her first-born she entertained an affection purely maternal; for

Emil, however, she harboured a feeling almost worshipful. The fact

that she had borne him was to her a miracle ever new. He woke heaven

in her heart and his love opened her soul as the sun's ray opens the

flower. Neither husband nor elder son ever suspected the exquisite

quality of her nature.

Edgar was a lad of fifteen when Emil was born. From the first he

turned a cold face on the mite, and as time went on grew jealous of him

up to the eyes. There was something august about Emil even in his

ugly, defenceless childhood. He was of a singularly inquiring turn of

mind and years afterward his mother delighted to relate how, when he

was two years old, he had crawled a mile and a half from home, lured

forward by the curiosity that later became his salient characteristic.

His energies spent, he had rested on a flat rock. While his tiny body

grew warm in the sun, his infant mind had lost itself in inarticulate

reverie. If he could go on quite to the end of everything, even to

that hazy, far-away point where blue met green, what should he find?

It was this speculative tendency that gave his hair its wild aspect;

that kindled in his eyes their roving, searching glance; that already,

young as he was, made him look at life with an air of keen astonishment.

When he was eleven years old, his father died and the reins of

management fell into Edgar's hands. That young man, being in no sense

a typical farmer, immediately exchanged the farm, which the elder St.

Ives had bequeathed him, for a large country store. By dint of shrewd

management, he soon became a successful merchant. So rapidly did he

rise that by the end of the second year, he had built himself a house

and installed in it a shrewish wife who lost no time in presenting him

with a swarm of children. He also placed in the house his mother, and

the poor lady dwelt there under the lash of the wife's tongue, like a

servant in constant fear of dismissal. In righteous mood, Edgar even

went so far as to extend the protection of his roof to his young

brother. In a tiny chamber over the kitchen the lad's first tentative

inventions saw the light.

But between these two natures a gulf was fixed. If truth were told,

they had not a trait in common. Edgar was provident and saving, Emil

the reverse. Long ere he had obtained his majority, he had wheedled

from his mother the little money she held in trust for him from his

grudging and disapproving father. To be sure, the sum was very meagre

and could not be stretched, by any calculation, to cover the technical

training the lad coveted; therefore he had expended a part of it for

scientific books and the rest had gone little by little into materials

for his constant experimenting.

For the precious little inventions which cluttered Emil's chamber and

sometimes found their unwelcome way into other parts of the house,

Edgar had a withering contempt. He never missed an opportunity to have

a fling at them and his scornful words entered the mother's heart like

barbed arrows. However, in his nineteenth year Emil produced an

apparatus for freshening sea water which it seemed must prove of

inestimable value to all sea-faring folk. The mother in a flutter of

excitement and even with tears, besought him to take his brother into

his confidence. In fact this was necessary, if he wished to secure the

use of an abandoned and much coveted granary for a shop. But the lad

held back. The apparatus, despite its undoubted usefulness, seemed to

him of trifling importance. The mother, however, foreseeing fortune

ahead of him, urged the step and at length the boy consented. True to

her prediction, after his first scornful inspection of the contrivance,

Edgar admitted that it might have possibilities. Like most of the

boy's experiments, this device was beyond his comprehension, but he

could grasp the fact that sailors and fishermen, with the chance of

shipwreck forever staring them in the face, might have use for it. He

therefore offered to get it patented, then took steps to secure the

patent--in his own name. As it chanced, the papers, bearing his

signature but otherwise carefully copied from those which Emil had

submitted for his inspection fell under the boy's eye.

The night following this discovery, a light appeared in the granary.

Edgar, peering from his chamber window, perceived a demoniacal figure,

smashing and demolishing everything the little shop contained. Even as

he looked, it lifted a small instrument, which represented months of

patient labour, and threw it with a crash to the floor. Instantly

Edgar was out of the house. He scampered across the yard, his night

gear fluttering in the light of the pale moon. Emil at that moment

caught up the sea-water device and sent it crashing through the

doorway. Being made largely of glass, the instrument shivered into a

million minute fragments. Edgar and his wife and children, who had

flocked to his side, covered their eyes. When they looked again,

through the dust that still hung in the air, they beheld a bent figure,

lit up by the gleam of the lantern, still moving in a whirl of rubbish.

Edgar in his scant raiment danced up and down.

"Thief!" he hissed.

For an instant the boy paused in his diabolical work:

"Thief!" He burst into terrifying laughter.

With one final wrench he brought down the work-bench and flung it

across the pile; then kneeling, he applied a match to the mass.

Crackling flames leaped upward. He got to his feet and stood with his

figure silhouetted against the red glow. In that hour he had destroyed

something more precious than his inventions, his books and all his

little workmen's kit in which he had taken such pride. That which had

gone down in flames hotter than those which raged around him, was the

essential quality which is youth. Such searing emotions are the death

of adolescence. He was visibly trembling. The hair was matted above

the eyes which he lifted. Without a word he darted past them and

disappeared into the night.

A quarter of a mile from the house he met his mother. She was waiting

for him in the darkness. Quivering all over she took him in her long

arms. But his anger had already subsided and he felt stealing over him

a new and gratifying sense of release.

"Don't, Mother," he whispered hoarsely, "it was bound to come,--and

you'll see--I'll soon send for you."

Her tears distressed him. For this cheated, baffled, frail and

suffering mother who asked but one thing, that his ambition be

gratified, Emil's feeling was fiercely paternal. It was the solitary

oasis in a nature devoid of all other affections.

He caressed her with his hands, but presently he held them up before

her. "With these," he whispered, "and with this," and he touched his

forehead, "I'll do something. You'll see. The world needs me," he

cried.

The world needed him! At that moment he felt that he could grasp the

universe, instinct with unknown laws, and plunging his mind into it

could drag forth some hitherto undiscovered force.

The world needed him! Poor, foolish, misguided, highly-gifted youth!

Certainly he was more valuable to Society than its rickety children who

would never grow up, its infirm old men, sick with alcoholism, its base

and unworthy charges; yet for all these, he soon discovered, the great

New York, glancing indifferently from her million windows, provided

asylums; but for him, who had in his head that which should bring the

world to his feet--for him nothing.

In turn he worked for a photographer, a printer, and an engraver, but

as he failed to pay attention to his duties and urged upon his irate

employers devices for improving the processes used in their work, he

remained only a short time in each situation. By the third year,

however, he drifted into a place that promised to be permanent.

The conservative lithographing establishment of Benjamin Just and

Richard Lawless was in need of an apprentice. Being by this time much

reduced in health and spirits, with all the fiery currents of his being

at low ebb, Emil accepted this berth. For upwards of a year he worked

with commendable sobriety; in fact, became no more than a pivot, a

screw, a tiny whirling wheel in the life of the factory. But at the

end of a twelvemonth his old fever broke out in aggravated form; the

trivial bit of mechanism became a madman or a genius over night.

Waving some papers above his head, laughing naïvely and applauding

himself, Emil approached the head draughtsman one day and exhibited a

little model. But the draughtsman into whose hands all the choice work

of the establishment fell, swore at him. 'The art of lithography,' he

gave him to understand, 'was an old and honourable one; and as for

cheapening the work, heaven knew, enough had been done in that line!'

And he briefly consigned the young fool and his new-fangled process to

hell.

Thereupon, Emil, nothing daunted, approached the two owners. Trembling

all over with eagerness, he fixed them with his eyes in which a flame

seemed to be leaping up and down.

"Just a thin flexible sheet, that is what I propose," he cried;--"a

sheet which has all the qualities of the finest of your lithographic

stones, but which is superior because cheaper and lighter and the

possible supply unlimited. How's that? A sheet, which after one

preparation for printing, will continue to yield clean proofs without

dampening or resetting for a much longer time than the best of your

lithographic stones," he continued.

"But how do you print from this precious sheet of yours?" inquired Mr.

Lawless, a fat red man, who tried to look scornful and only succeeded

in looking ridiculous. If truth were told, the partners, while

appearing to have little faith in the scheme, felt in the pits of their

stomachs an excited feeling similar to that produced by high swinging;

indeed, their phlegmatic pulses beat to the same excited measure as the

young inventor's.

"With a specially constructed cylinder press, that's now I'll print,"

answered Emil.

As a result of the conference, the owners, although professing

scepticism, consented to give him a small room in which to perfect his

invention and, in their generosity, even guaranteed to continue the

payment of his former meagre salary.

From that day, Emil began to live a particular and intensely nervous

life.

He was now one of a large army, consisting of press men, lithographers,

zinc men, clerks, artists, stenographers, bookkeepers. The majority of

these men did their work methodically and as a matter of duty. When

they quitted the factory at night, they forgot the labour that had

occupied them during the day. With Emil, however, it was otherwise.

In a tiny room, reeking with heat and dust and clamorous with the

rumble of the presses, he worked, scarcely taking note of the passing

of one day and the birth of another. Often he sought the factory at

night. The general manager, a man with a forceful presence and a

shrewd eye, scornfully shrugged his shoulders. He distrusted such

enthusiasm; but the owners were more hopeful. At night they had a door

left open for the erratic inventor.

Unconscious that he was observed, Emil hurried through the streets and

bounded up the steps to his den. Then how he caressed his invention,

how he stared straight before him with eyes that saw nothing, while his

brain drew from the surrounding ether a crowd of images wonderful for

their reality and vigour. Sometimes in these nights of limpid

contemplation, he became as beautiful as an angel. At other times,

inspiration was capricious and the particular idea that he sought must

be pursued. At such times he would crack his fingers at the joints,

wave backward and forward like a tree in a storm, rock like a ship on

an angry sea. Somehow, he would wrest his idea from the vast Unknown.

And when he had succeeded in fixing it, smiling peacefully, he would go

to sleep like a child; go to sleep and dream of some far land where

invention was not torture. Before his work-bench, exhausted, he was

often discovered in the early dawn by Ding Dong when he came to sweep

out.

Half-witted, deaf and dumb, with a face so hideous that caricature

could not exaggerate it, Ding Dong had received his nick-name from some

bookish artist or other. With a fat tongue useless in his wide mouth

and ears like sails, though they served to convey no sound to his

meagre brain, Ding Dong ate habitually of the food thrown away by

saloons, drank the dregs left in whiskey glasses, and, with the agility

of a little cat, accepted the stumps of cigarettes which the clerks

good naturedly threw him.

Between him and Emil, existed a peculiar friendship, and many were the

novel breakfast parties held in the little workroom at the hour when

New York was just waking to life.

Ding Dong procured rolls and made coffee; then three partook of the

meal, for there were always three, the inventor, Ding Dong and, to

furnish the feminine element, Lulu, a tiny South American monkey.

Pinched and sad Lulu seemingly was not devoid of coquetry, for she

wrapped herself in a bit of bright flannel which she held together

beneath her chin with one small black hand, while she peeped out from

between the folds with her little mournful eyes.

Of all the prisoners in the great building, none was more miserable

than this little monkey. A present to the wife of one of the partners,

who detested her, she had been brought down to the factory where she

led a truly miserable life. In order to be out of reach of the furnace

man, who had once treated her cruelly, she ran up among the

asbestos-covered pipes, and there remained, save when she suffered

herself to be lured down by Ding Dong. It was as if these two touching

creatures, the one so nearly bestial and the other so nearly human,

strove to lessen each other's profound loneliness.

As Emil pulled at his long pipe, resting after his exertions of the

night, something of his serenity stole over his companions and wrapped

in the same mood of abstracted dreaminess, they watched the dawn

together.

When the department overseer appeared, a shudder ran through the

building. The presses rumbled and boys began to feed them with great

sheets of paper. The band of pale, dispirited youths in the art

department etched their designs. With dust, sweat, oaths, grinding

muscles, shriek and thunder of machinery,--the day began. Hour after

hour the passionate clamour increased to a poem, a hymn, a pæan to the

God of Work.

At twelve o'clock the tension relaxed. Men from the different

departments poured into the streets and sought the cafes and

restaurants of the neighbourhood. A few, however, always remained in

the building. For that hour they were no longer slaves. The head

bookkeeper, an old man, stretched his legs, glad to get down from his

high stool; one of the stenographers, with flying fingers resumed her

work on a little red jacket for Lulu. Even Emil was affected by the

sudden contagion of idleness that swept the building. Leaving the

model of his press, he took time to stare from the windows at the roofs

of New York. But despite his interest in his work these surroundings

were beginning to tell upon him. One day in July, unable to bear the

heat, he staggered out into the passage to get a drink from a pail of

water that stood there. He was lifting the dripping dipper to his

lips, when a pair of eyes met his with a sort of shock. When he

stumbled back into the little den, Annie Lawless, springing up from a

chair in her father's office, followed him.

"What's the matter?" she cried sharply, as he sank down with his head

bowed on the work-bench. She started to summon someone, but a second

glance at his pale face with tiny beads of perspiration around the

nostrils, caused her to change her mind. She passed swiftly to the

door and closed it. Then, detaching a jewelled smelling-bottle from

her belt, she held it under his nose with her little shaking hand.

When Emil came to himself, he saw bending over him a delicate face

shaped like a pear, the cheeks white almost as his own. This face was

furnished with soft open lips, like an infant's, and, by contradiction,

with two blue eyes which, for the moment, looked into his with an

almost maternal solicitude.

"Are you better?" The question was blended with the odour of violets,

subtle and overpowering, with the gleam of diamonds, with the touch of

a soft fabric, warm with life, beneath his cheek.

The next instant he sat up, flushing all over. And Annie Lawless

blushed too.

"Yes, I'm all right, perfectly right," he muttered, and tried to laugh.

"It's only this infernal heat," supporting his head in a strange

fashion as if he feared it would drop off.

"Yes, it is awfully hot," Annie answered. "Is that the model for the

cylinder press?" she asked presently. "I've heard Father speak of your

inventions."

Emil, whose head was still giddy, had a childish wish that she would

come near him again and put those hands, covered with rings, on his

brow. He looked at her as she stood speaking. When she turned

sidewise he noticed dreamily how small her waist was, he believed he

could span it with his two hands; and her nose was slightly hooked,

which combined with her quick movements, gave her somewhat of the

appearance of a bird.

"I've heard Papa say that he thinks your press is going to be a big

thing," she continued, "but I should think he ought to give you a

better place to work in."

At these words Emil roused himself. He had not known before that Mr.

Lawless believed in the press. "Why yes, if I had a decent place to

work in--" he began.

"Papa ought to pay you more money," she said with conviction. "Why, he

used to have a man who invented things and he gave him special rooms

and a fine salary besides. Papa says a man with the inventive bee in

his bonnet isn't fit to look after himself. But that man was," she

concluded, "for he left Papa one day in the lurch and went to inventing

things on his own account, and since then he has made a pile of money.

You'll do that too if they aren't careful."

The upshot of the matter was that she began making plans for the relief

of the stranger who, with his extraordinary air, seemed more

interesting to her than anyone she had ever known.

"It may take a little time, but I'll manage it somehow," she told him

as she left.

And she did manage it.

She saw Emil several times, arousing a perfect furor of gossip among

the artists by the temerity of her visits. When she knew that her

father and his partner were out of the building, she slipped in to see

Emil, and, more than once as the summer advanced, she met him at an

appointed place on his homeward walk.

Finally, acting on her advice, he sent in a written protest to his

employers, stating that it was impossible for him to complete the work

at his present salary and setting forth his desire for a more fully

equipped workroom. In conclusion, he intimated that if his requests

were not acceded to, in view of the services he had already rendered

them, he should feel free to quit their employ.

The day following this step, Annie appeared with triumph written all

over her face.

"It's all settled," she announced. "Mr. Just and the general manager

were at our house last night. They talked about you and I listened at

the library door. Papa made Mr. Wakefield admit that he'd been wrong

in his estimate of you. And then Papa went on to say that he thought

they might as well, first as last, offer to grub stake you. Do you

know what that means?" she cried, laughing. "It means that they will

pay all your expenses and give you rooms somewhere like that Mr.

Pennyworth I told you about. He said already, by the different

improvements you'd made on this and that machine, you'd saved the firm

thousands of dollars. You didn't know that, I guess. He said you were

too valuable a man to lose. And that's not all," she went on to cover

her embarrassment, for Emil was staring at her, "you're to have a few

weeks somewhere in the country if you want them, and I'm sure you need

a vacation badly enough."

"How did you manage it?" he asked, speaking with difficulty.

"Oh, I just kept Papa thinking about you by the things I said. One day

I said that the factory was horribly stuffy and I should think the

artists, and you particularly, would just die. And then I asked him

carelessly if he thought your press was going to be any good, and he

said, 'Good!--well, if he can be got to finish it, that's all we want.

The man's a genius!' And I laughed and told him he'd better look out

or his genius would have sunstroke. I explained to him that you were

probably so worn out that you couldn't finish it. I said a thing here

and a thing there, mere nothings, but I made him uneasy, and then came

your letter throwing up the whole scheme before it was completed. Oh I

knew he'd do it, if it was managed all right!" she exclaimed gleefully.

And then changing her tone: "Are you glad?" and she wrinkled her brow

into anxious furrows beneath her light summer hat.

Emil took one of her little hands timidly. He turned a ring round and

round on her tiny finger, staring at her, endeavouring to find words.

Suddenly two arms were laid about his neck and all quivering in the

storm of her own emotions, like a bird seeking shelter, she fluttered

against his breast. Her hat had slipped to her shoulders. He felt

that she was sobbing violently, and scarcely knowing what he did, he

clasped her closely in his arms and muttering unintelligible words

which he himself did not understand, he pressed his lips again and

again to her small blond head.

But the plum that tumbles into our lap without the asking is seldom as

fine as the fruit we climb for, strain for, spend hours in thirsting

after. Three weeks--and this fierce agitation of the senses had

subsided. It was an excitement, a fever, which at the time had been

augmented by so many equivocal influences; by the noise of the presses

which had seemed to keep time to his pulses, by the gleam of the girl's

jewels, by the softness of her attire, by the fact, more than all else,

that she was his chief's daughter.

A whiff of sea air and Emil looked back on the affair with utter

weariness. Without a conscience, he was accustomed to follow simply

the dictates of his own nature. The memory of the girl irked him,

therefore with heavy sighs like a weary horse, he destroyed her

letters. However, the phantom of love had passed very close, and it

was not in vain that all the electric currents of his being had been

set in motion. He was awake now to another world than that in which he

had hitherto dwelt,--awake, with his great inquisitive eyes, attentive.

It was at this juncture that Rachel Beckett dawned on his horizon.

When she came round the rock leading the cow, a novel sensation

convulsed that strange uncultivated heart of his. A man's heart is a

garden in which, before the coming of death, many flowers of emotion

bloom; and the history of these flowers is the history of his life.

CHAPTER VIII

IN THE CAUSE OF SCIENCE

Since the night of Emil's departure, which had brought such terror to

her heart, a divine serenity had fallen upon Mrs. St. Ives. His

frequent letters, filled with the vitality of his genius and all

radiant with love, were to her a second baptism of youth. Palpitating

with enthusiasm, she carried them to her room where she read and reread

them. Sometimes she wept over them, and for days after the receipt of

one, she went about with an expression of utter peace. But when, for

some reason, a letter failed to arrive, then in that house far removed

from the scenes among which he dwelt, she would clasp her hands in

silent agony, she would be given over to anxiety, glancing about her,

more nervous than any bird; she would rebuke the teasing grandchildren

and fiercely demand the letter which, she imagined, her daughter-in-law

kept from her. Then became evident in her no longer the triumph of

youth but the tragedy of age.

Without doing anything to deserve her special affection, both Edgar and

his wife were jealous of her absorbing love for Emil. They ridiculed

this worship. And no one except the singular object of her devotion

comprehended the extent of her suffering. Vague and unsatisfactory as

he was in all other relations, where she was concerned he was gifted

with an insight that might have done credit to a woman. Full well he

comprehended that she was living her life in his, and, for that reason,

he strove to make it gorgeous for her. Poor devil of an inventor, with

his toes all but through his boots and his head in the clouds! He

would often brood over her situation with tears in his eyes. He

cherished the hope of one day having her with him, and, in the event of

her coming, planned like a lover, to greet her royally. But once

plunged in his work, it must be confessed that for days together he

incontinently forgot all about her. Then, perhaps, a feeble scrawl

would arrive, announcing a headache or some trifling woman's worry, and

contrition would be rampant in him. Rousing himself, he would write

her one of his long, characteristic letters, fairly pouring out his

life on the page.

As may be conjectured, his being sent to Old Harbour to rest and,

incidentally, to add the finishing touches to the metal plate and

cylinder press, was subject matter for a glowing epistle, which brought

to the mother a wealth of happiness and sent her to bed night after

night with touching prayers of gratitude on her lips. Once settled in

the hotel at Old Harbour, however, Emil abandoned the work in hand and

fell to making a _depth indicator_. How think of anything else with

the sea out there waiting to be plumbed? In vain Annie Lawless hinted

that her father was anxious to install the press and counselled haste,

as has been related, Emil destroyed her letters and went feverishly

forward with his self-appointed task.

On the afternoon of the day of his meeting with Rachel he was in fine

feather. The presence of the girl and the prospect of testing his

invention filled him with animation. At moments, as he tinkered at the

boat's rim, he whistled so shrilly that the sea gulls paused in their

wheeling to listen; and this complicated energy, this unusual virility,

was as much a tribute to her who sat in the grey nest of boulders, as a

testimony of interest in the work. And so she understood it.

With her slight figure relieved against the skyline, she waited for him

to complete his preparations. Now and then her eyes travelled, with

unerring directness, to the mound of sand where he had that morning

buried the letter. What did those hard-packed grains of sand conceal?

Instinctively she played with the question and its import sat deep in

her eye. As if by a stroke of art, she had placed herself in direct

line with the figure-head, so that no one glancing that way could fail

to be struck by the dissimilarity between image and maid. Mobility and

an ardent capacity for a rich and varied existence were written all

over her; that something which is the potency of womanhood itself

seemed to have awakened suddenly from the torpor of youth in that

little heart and to have come abroad for the first time experimentally.

There she sat, and whenever he turned his head, he was struck anew with

her, so that he must needs look again and yet again.

She had covered her feet with her skirts and her hands were clasped

decorously in her lap. Her brow had a male gravity, as distinguished

from her chin which was softly-turned and exceeding feminine. Her hair

was parted and trained in two shining unbroken portions and tucked away

behind her ears, something as a curtain is looped back from a window.

The sphinx-like mystery of Leonardo's _La Gioconda_ was alive in her

eyes.

Even while the girl, in her essential self, remained superlatively

innocent and unconscious, there looked out from her little virgin

countenance at Emil, gravely selecting him, the 'Genius of the

Species.' Her glance proclaimed sex and intellectual detachment.

Presently Emil turned his face over his shoulder and beckoned to her;

and his laugh was repeated by the water coursing up the beach and

curling round the boat in white-lipped waves. The fog had disappeared

and the sun was now shining joyously.

Rachel grasped the oars, rowing with long even strokes, and Emil sat in

the bow. To one side of the boat and projecting into the water, he had

attached a bell, which gave out when struck a special, sharp, short

note; and on the other side of the boat he had placed a telephone

receiver connected with a small box.

"And inside that box is another still smaller of metal," he told her,

"and that contains the secret of the whole device. Did you ever hear

of the microphone?"

She shook her head.

"Well, it's a tiny affair no larger than a pea, and will so magnify

sound in connection with an electric current and a telephone receiver,

such as I have here, that the footsteps of a fly on a sheet of paper

sound about like the tramping of an army. It's so powerful," he

continued, "that if I were to place it in the end of a tube and point

the tube, say, toward that island out there, any noise going on---a

wagon rattling along the road or a child naming--I should be able to

hear on this side, provided I had arranged the microphone so as to shut

out all intervening noises. For instance, this microphone here is

sensitive to no sound but that of the bell and the vibrations that I

hope may be reflected back from the sea bottom. But we'll soon know

whether it will work," he cried. "Row about twenty rods farther and

then I'll tell you not only the depth of the water at that point, but

the character of the bottom and whether it will be safe for our big

liner to advance."

He was trembling all over and Rachel reflected his interest. She sent

the boat forward a few strokes, then rested on the dripping oars.

Nature, it seemed, was in her most approachable mood and at a hint of

coaxing would reveal her secrets; yet the girl was conscious of

something in the phenomena of the sea implacable and resistant to the

efforts of man. Concealed promontories, hidden shoals, submerged

headlands, treacherous peaks, drowned under the ceaseless rushing of

waters--would the Voice come back bearing tale of all this?--or, if

mud, weeds, fish, incrustations of shell--would the Voice proclaim

safety, and the inventor know the very thickness of that rolling,

beauteous mantle of mystery?

Nothing of the poetic significance of the test was lost on the girl,

and she felt the hand of pity at her throat when she witnessed Emil's

disappointment manifest all over him like a blight. Then she gloried

when she saw him repeat the test.

Come what might, it was clear he had faith in himself.

Tenaciously he passed from one test to another. He contorted himself,

stooping in the bottom of the boat, his eyes bright with the steady

flame of his determination. He took off his coat and, flinging back

his hair, listened with the receiver at one ear while he covered the

other with his free hand. At last he was able to hear: first, the

muffled stroke of the bell, then the extremely feeble sound vibrations

reflected from the sea bottom through the microphone-telephone; and by

the period of time which elapsed between the bell stroke and the return

impulse, he was able, after innumerable experiments, to estimate

closely the distance which the sound travelled before being sent back.

The afternoon advanced and waned, twilight approached, and, by his

complete absorption, he revealed to Rachel the toil, the cautious

experiments, the days and nights of labour expended for such meagre,

very meagre results. He became, all at once, in her imagination, a

figure exalted and pathetic. But it was plain that the unsatisfactory

test had consumed a portion of his existence. At last, with an abrupt

gesture, he directed her to put back to the shore.

The darkness had fallen and the waves wetted the beach indefatigably,

the ocean murmured incomprehensibly, and from the heavens poured the

imperturbable light of the stars. The stars threw their calm radiance

over the figure that, silent and absorbed, leaped out of the boat and

without a word made off around the rocks.

A shadowy presence, which immediately disclosed itself as a boy,

emerged from among the boulders and scowled after the retreating form.

"The next time he's for rowing round in such crazy fashion, I'll take

him." And with his strong arms, André helped Rachel beach the boat.

She flung down the end of rope and faced him. "You'll do nothing of

the sort," she cried; "you'll mind your business, do you understand?"

These words, spit out upon him, made him open his eyes in astonishment,

but before he could find speech, she likewise had disappeared in the

gloom.

CHAPTER IX

THE OLD FASCINATION

In spite of André's interference and her grandfather's mild

questionings, in spite, even, of Nora Gage's curious and sly looks,

Rachel continued to take Emil out in the boat every day. But on the

fifth day when she went to the beach, he did not appear. For a time

she waited in acute loneliness, then, with a magnificent effort, she

returned to the house, deliberately donned her best dress, and,

haughtily, under Nora's little inquisitive eyes, started for Old

Harbour. Some powerful law of existence was at work driving her

blindly forward to realize a distant idea in the face of the challenges

of her maidenhood.

She walked rapidly until she gained the main street of the little

village. Then her steps flagged, and with her head turning idly from

side to side, she noticed, as if for the first time, the names over the

doors of the storm-beaten shops:--"Old Harbour Yacht Yard," "Ship

Chandlery and Hardware," "Paint, Cordage and Boat Trimmings."

In her dainty trappings, with the shadow from her hat in her eyes and

folds of her crisp muslin dress in one sunburnt hand to keep it from

the soil of the road, she might have been a stranger on a first stroll

through the curious little town that smelled rankly of fish, instead of

a maid born and bred in those parts. Finally she paused before a

window where yellow oilskin coats were grotesquely displayed, together

with lanterns and canvas pails and other objects of signal interest to

one of her sex and age; and at that instant Emil, lounging in the door

of the hotel opposite with a pipe planted between his lips, spied her.

For two blocks she walked rapidly, and when she did permit him to

overtake her, she scarcely gave answer to his greeting. As if by

mutual consent they turned their steps in the direction of the old

Burying Point, a rocky promontory at the town's edge where for two

centuries Old Harbour had persistently discovered graves for its dead

among the boulders. Rocks and bones of men disputed the place, and

yet, what more fit than that they should be laid to rest there, those

staunch old captains and brave wives, whose very spirits had more in

common with rocks than with flowers? Yet flowers bloomed there in

scanty elegance, and sprays of 'lady's ear-drop' and 'Queen Anne's

lace,' testifying to some feminine grace hidden away in neighbouring

graves, caught and clung to Rachel's dress as she passed.

Emil, who was frankly pleased to see her, kept laughing loudly as he

switched off the heads of the tall grass: but Rachel turned away her

face and bit her lip; now that she saw him, she was indifferent to him.

She was not thoroughly aware of her own actions until they were

accomplished. Constantly something vast fought within her. Indeed, in

this scrap of a girl was manifest one of the greatest desires, the

greatest volitions of the universe.

Reaching the edge of the cemetery where it ran out in a jutting cliff

that commanded a view of extended range and beauty, she sank down on an

old seat and cast a challenging glance at Emil.

"Is the _depth indicator_ complete?" she asked. "I did not know that

you considered it finished."

"Yes, it's practically finished," he answered; "anyhow, I shan't be

able to do anything more to it for the present. I've got to finish my

lithographic outfit. They're hurrying me. I'm heartily sick of it,

but there's nothing else to be done."

"Of course you must finish it," she agreed quickly, and the last little

cloud vanished from her eyes.

With instinctive tact she began making more attractive to him the duty

that lay before him. She made him explain the salient features of the

lithographic improvement and she nodded her head sagely at each point

as if she understood. Then she praised its ingenuity. Finally, having

divined his feeling for his mother, she hinted at her pleasure in his

success.

"Your mother must be excited these days," she said, "and proud, too."

The glow in his glance had been deepening, and pride was visible all

over him, but at the mention of his mother his expression changed.

"Yes, it must go through for her sake," he said soberly. "Oh, I'm a

queer devil," he continued, hitching his shoulders in some impatience;

"I've a brain exactly like one of the monkeys in the Zoo--attracted

first by this thing, then by that, just like one of the monkeys in the

Zoo. I say, you're coming to-morrow?" he asked, as she rose. "If I'm

to finish in time, someone's got to bring me to account."

He stood smiling at her, the sun lighting up his rough locks and

causing him to half close his questioning, eager eyes in which there

was a touch of anxiety.

She lifted toward him her sensitive and responsive face.

"Will you come?" he insisted. His eyes held hers.

Her brows rose ingenuously, her lips parted, though no word passed

them. Then, with a mute gesture of assent, she turned away.

Reaching home, she deemed it expedient to conceal her towering spirits.

But even so, it seemed extraordinary that her grandfather did not

surprise the thought that informed her cheeks, her eyes and every curve

of her body with witchery. In Emil's presence her bearing had not been

what she could have wished, but now it was that of a queen.

At bedtime, before her mirror, she arranged her hair after a new

fashion. She stared into her bright soft face. Standing in her

nightgown she hugged closely to her breast her happiness that was young

and young and once again young.

Borne forward in obedience to an irresistible command of nature, she

continued to meet St. Ives. In spite of tears and passionate revolts

and innumerable petty hypocrisies by which she strove to put another

face on her actions, that was awake in her which would not be gainsaid.

And, thanks to her sex which so readily can blind itself, her movements

for the most part remained superbly instinctive and unconscious.

When she set out of an afternoon for Old Harbour she caught and held

every eye, like something bright and sparkling. Nora Gage observed her

and malignity appeared to deepen the creases of her fat; while Lizzie

Goodenough longed for the temerity to give warning to the motherless

slip. All unmindful of them, Rachel, with such bravery of raiment as

she could command, pursued her course. And her accoutrement, which was

always the same, was by no means inconsiderable. The dress was of

yellow barred-muslin and the skirt swayed as she walked like the

corolla of a drooping flower. The waist fitted her closely, save at

the bosom where there was an over-lapping fulness and in this surplice

front was pinned carelessly, surely with the height of art, a cluster

of evening primroses. These frail flowers, constantly agitated by the

mad beating of her heart, drooped finally, as if in sheer delight at

their enviable position. Fastened beneath her chin was the ribbon of

her flower-decked hat. This ribbon, passing round that little smooth

face and seeming to hold it in a dainty embrace, was a triumph of

coquetry: it had life and spoke, calling attention to the down on the

cheek, to the lift of the upper lip, finally to the eyes, innocent as a

stag's--eyes that never the less revealed in this ardent, complex,

highly-spiritual creature intense aspirations towards a fuller

existence.

One afternoon on arriving at the cemetery she seated herself on a

certain flat-topped tomb, and there some minutes later Emil joined her.

The look from under his rough mane came at her diagonally, as with head

lowered on his hand, he sat beside her. His eyes shed on her

admiration; his moustache leaped against his cheek as he smiled.

"It's good to be near you."

Rachel glanced at him askance, and one little hand trembled so on the

other that she had to intertwine their fingers strongly. Though she

drank in these words like wine, she did not know how to prolong the

moment. Instead,--O perverse instinct that frequently dominates

helpless youth!--she inquired about his work. For interminable hours

she had longed for this very moment, yet here she was shortening it!

Emil rose joyously to her question. Not only did he reply to it, but

he amplified his explanation and finally launched into a detailed

description of the instrument on which he was then engaged.

Once started on the subject, she knew he would not abandon it until she

rose as a signal that the interview must end.

Happiness was diminished, but for an instant only. Disappointment was

drowned in pride. It was something to have demonstrated to her her

value as a confidante. To her imagination this stranger dropped by

Fate at her feet, was all that the childish André was not. He appealed

to her by reason of his stronger magnetism and his greater mind. Not

only did he seem to her to possess every quality of the ideal lover,

but,--and the discovery completed her subjugation and was essential to

it,--he was the eternal child of genius whom she longed to protect.

The moment came when they had to part. Sometimes they separated at the

gate of the cemetery; sometimes, if dusk had overtaken them, Emil

walked home with her. Frequently, at the moment of parting, he caught

her hand and looked fixedly at her eyes and mouth. Though judging from

the expression of both eyes and mouth, the permission he sought was not

absolutely withheld, the firm, round face fronting his in the evening

light seemed to mask a host of imperious possibilities. Its look, on

the whole, was equivocal. Scarcely aware of what restrained him, he

pressed her trusting little fingers and let her go. Rachel was one of

those fortunate maidens who are never treated with levity by men.

After the young girl had disappeared in the house, the spell she had

cast over Emil's restless heart was in a measure dissipated. He

straightened his cap, thrust his hands into his pockets and swung away,

his thoughts once more on his work.

But for Rachel there existed no such opposing interest. Each day,

through the hours of separation, she lived on the exhaustless, ardent

vitality absorbed during their last interview. But it was not long ere

the glory of her dream was partially eclipsed. The guileless disturber

of her bliss was a certain Lottie Loveburg who caught up with her one

afternoon as she was striking into the road for Pemoquod Point. As she

had parted from Emil some minutes earlier, Rachel was not averse to

Lottie's company.

"I'm going your way, at least as far as Mr. Patch's," Lottie announced

with a panting breath. "Mother wants me to get a mess of pease for

supper. Bliss and Mason are all sold out."

The two girls went on side by side.

Lottie was a few years older than Rachel. In school she had been

considered an out-and-out stupid, but once released from school she was

acknowledged a belle. She was a large full-bosomed lass with a head of

heavy blond hair. The one misfortune of her face was the slight

crossing of the blue eyes. As far as possible, she remedied the defect

by a frequent lowering of the lids, though the precaution was one which

she did not trouble herself to take when walking, as at present, with

one of her own kind. From this big lazy girl there issued a compelling

and entirely innocent charm that attacked the opposite sex. To the

absorbed and dreamy Rachel she was as cornet to flute, when both blow

the same ravishing air.

For a space the pair followed the road in silence. Had any observer

been present, he might well have asked himself how much of the hope

depicted on the countenances of these two young creatures was destined

to be fulfilled. Were they destined to be mothers of sons and

daughters who, in turn, would inhabit this desolate coast?--or was it

written that something of their superabundance of dream and romance be

realized? It was significant that they set their faces toward the

immense infinite ocean, suggestive that their skirts, whipped to the

side by the breeze, seemed waving a farewell to the rude life of the

land.

Though their shoulders touched, for sometime each seemed unconscious of

the other. Lottie was the first to speak.

"Well," she cried, "here we are at Mr. Patch's and I haven't said a

word of what's weighing on my mind."

Rachel started and glanced sideways at her. She feared some allusion

to her meetings with Emil.

But Lottie was too much engrossed in her own affairs to give a thought

to her companion's. "Yes, I think I must tell you," she continued with

a sigh that was a frank announcement of vanity. "Well then, Mr.

Forebush intends to fight Jim Wright. He's going to follow Jim as he

goes along home past the cemetery, and when they reach a lonely place,

he's going to drag Jim in behind the wall and settle things."

"The cemetery?" cried Rachel sharply. The cemetery was her territory.

"They won't be disturbed there--that's all Mr. Forebush is thinking of.

He travels for a New York shoe firm, you know, and he says he's sick of

finding Jim hanging round our house every time he comes to town."

"Then does Mr. Forebush--does he like you?" Rachel questioned. Though

she made free use of a warmer term in her meditations, she hesitated to

pronounce it.

But the more experienced Lottie had no such scruple. "Like me!" She

threw her hands apart with an expansive motion. "Why he loves me!"

And to cover her embarrassment she burst into laughter.

Rachel crimsoned. "Yes, but how do you know he does?" she persisted.

Lottie continued laughing. "Oh, you queer child! You understand

nothing!" Then, as the other darted an angry look at her,--"Why,

doesn't the fight prove it, even if he hadn't said it? But he has said

it. I wouldn't take stock in him if he hadn't. No looks and kisses

without words for me! But I'm leaving you here. Wonder if Mr. Patch

is at home." Then, as she was passing in at the gate she added with a

return of the sentimental manner, "I'm sure I hope Jim won't hurt Mr.

Forebush; he's some bigger, you know."

Rachel did not remain to discuss this possibility. Instead, she threw

over her shoulder a curt "good-bye" and pursued her course.

When she was with Emil what did he talk about? Try as she would she

could recall no topic on which he dwelt save his own work. Ideas for

new inventions, for wonderful instruments jostled each other on his

lips. He explained them with fire;--plans, details, he mapped them all

out before her. "Fine to do!" he would cry, and while the words came

forth in the most ringing tones of his voice and his eyes constantly

sought hers, conscious that he revived in her presence his courage and

light-heartedness, she herself was tricked into contentment. But now

she questioned the extent of her power over him.

Until she had covered the distance from Zarah Patch's to "the barn,"

her feeling was nicely balanced between dejection and hope. But from

"the barn" onward to her grandfather's house, hope flagged. Presently,

in the privacy of her own room, she succumbed to despair:

"It may be that I'm not good-looking enough!"

This was the thought that caused her the most exquisite pang. If she

failed on that score, as well yield up all hope at once. And in fancy

she ranged herself beside this spinster and that of her acquaintance

until the consciousness of the contrast between eighteen and fifty

brought a smile flickering to her lips. But did she fail in the matter

of looks? When dressed in her best, didn't she look as well as Lottie

Loveburg? To be sure Lottie had a rope of hair as big as your arm, but

then, there were her eyes!

To glance in the mirror over her bureau at her own resources of face

and figure was a natural action for a young thing in such harassing

doubt. At present, however on the subject of her looks, Rachel had all

of a child's ignorance. She was no more capable of appreciating the

sensitive changeful beauty of her colouring and expression than a

canary bird is of appreciating the beauty of its yellow plumage.

Turning from the mirror to a window, she lost herself in reverie. Her

thoughts returned again and again to the vision of two eyes that

entered audaciously into hers,--two eyes with a mind in them,--two good

lips laughing and talking from the covert of a curling beard; and as

she studied the exciting vision, the gloom lifted from her face. It

was indeed a great honour to be the confidante of such a man, she

assured herself; and once more was isolated by the realization on a

dizzy eminence above all her girl companions.

CHAPTER X

IN WHICH A KISS IS GIVEN AND REGRETTED

Unconscious of the grim humour that lurked in the fact of their having

selected it as a place to foregather, Emil and Rachel continued to meet

at the old Burying Point. No other lovers came there, and as deaths

were infrequent in Old Harbour and a funeral pageant an event, they

were practically secure from interruption. There, where the wind bent

the grass above the graves with a sound that struck pleasantly on the

ear and the insect world was all abroad on busy wings, they found the

isolation their spirits craved. The place was, at most, but a setting

for their two selves, for their sweet, intoxicating emotions.

Emil would look at Rachel pensively, almost appealingly. She stirred

in him depths of tenderness and often he would have been tempted into

some indiscretion had not her Arcadian innocence disconcerted him.

With a shrug of the shoulders and a sigh, he would turn away from her

as if offended at something. Though neither of them guessed it, what

raised the level of the situation and decreased its dangers, was the

unflagging interest she exhibited in his work. A woman's interest in

his achievement is always fruitful for a man. For the exuberant and

egotistic inventor, it was as fuel to flame. It immensely increased

his powers.

Had anyone, prompted by curiosity, troubled himself to spy on the pair,

he would have discovered an enthusiastic young fellow ranting on

matters scientific and a slip of a girl sitting nearby with delight and

despair depicted on her mobile countenance. The delight, he would have

remarked, was a fluctuating emotion; the despair in danger of becoming

a lasting one.

The two had been meeting in this way for upwards of three weeks and the

lithographic sheets and press were all but ready for triumphant

shipment, when Rachel's patience came unexpectedly to an end. Her

change of front was due directly to the weather. The temperature of

Pemoquod on a particular afternoon in late August made the wearing of

the muslin dress seem out of the question, for the day, while bright,

was distinctly chilly and by the time she quitted the cemetery

according to all reasonable calculations, the air would be cold. She

therefore made no change in her dress at all, but in her every-day

frock, with an old drab silk shawl, which had belonged to her mother,

over her shoulders and a book from the circulating library under her

arm, she took her way to Old Harbour, her prospects for a pleasant

interview considerably damaged. In this dull attire she would forego

Emil's lightning glances of pleasure, "For he might as well look at a

rock or a stump," she told herself disconsolately, "as look at me the

way I am to-day."

The weather beside the sea is nothing if not capricious, and by the

time she reached the cemetery, the air had become warm. It was between

four and five o'clock and the sun was sending long level shafts between

the graves, as if looking for something, when Rachel took her

accustomed place on the flat-topped tomb and let the shawl slip down

her back till it lay about her in a semicircle of rippling folds.

"Just my bad luck!" she soliloquized. "It's warm enough for a gauze

dress if one had such a thing. But I'd like to know what's the sense

of all this?" she resumed indignantly. "It isn't fair that he should

judge me by my clothes entirely and I'll not have it. I've a mind as

well as he!"

Now there was no evidence that Emil had judged her as lacking this

particular endowment, but she was in no mood to adhere closely to

facts. She began turning the pages of her book at random. She was

engaged in reading, with most imperfect attention it must be confessed,

a glowing description of the sphinx, when he arrived.

From a distance he spied her and she appeared to him to light up with

her grace the whole desolate place. For eight hours he had devoted

himself solely to work; now like one who receives but his just reward,

he drew near with a jovial smile on his lips. Rachel, though she was

conscious of his approach in every fibre of her being, was all for

concealing the fact. Partly through resentment, partly through

coquetry, she kept her eyes to her page. Suddenly Emil halted. Of a

truth, there was material enough in the picture she made, perched there

on the old table-tomb, for twenty conquests.

Dressed in the famous muslin, the rarest quality of her beauty, a

certain lurking mystery, was lost amid furbelows which simply

emphasized her youth. Now clothed in a sober little frock that

appeared to be as much part of her as its smooth bark is part of a

sapling, there was nothing to divert attention from her actual self.

There she sat with her book open on her lap, a kind of sibyl, while

about her hummed and buzzed and fluttered tribes of nimble-bodied

insects. Great blundering bees pilfered rude kisses from the willing

lips of some pink phlox swaying at her knee, a butterfly came to rest

on the tomb and even crawled with curious, quivering antennae toward

the hand outspread on the stone. A thrush poured out its heart from a

little whip of a tree over her head. In the midst of this place of

death, she spoke compellingly of life.

"I've come!"

Emil's voice trembled. The blood beat in his temples.

"How long have you been here?" he questioned, as he opened his hand

grudgingly and released her fingers. "How much have I missed of you?"

She ignored the form of the question. "Oh, I've not been here long, I

think," with disconcerting calmness, "though when I have a book I lose

all track of time."

At this unexpectedly repressing manner, he moved a few paces off.

"What is your book?" he inquired after a pause.

"'Impressions of the Nile Country,'" and she made a motion as if to

hand him the volume. But he kept his face away. Thereupon she plucked

a spear of grass and placed it carefully between the pages, while a

peculiarly significant and feminine expression played about her mouth.

"Oh," she sighed with sudden fervour, "how I should like to travel!

particularly how I should love to travel in Egypt."

"But why Egypt?" and he swung round.

"The sphinx;" she explained briefly. "It sits there gazing before it

forever and forever, and it never reveals the secret of the hands that

fashioned it, while the sun scorches it and the sands blow over it and

will finally throttle it, I suppose, but it will never tell."

With her arms crossed on her lap, she was staring at a near-by shrub.

It was a starved old rose-bush which had long since ceased to bear, but

she seemed to see in it a vision, for a smile unclosed her lips and

narrowed her eyes. She looked up at him and her bosom lifted.

"Yes," she repeated softly, "I should like mightily to see the sphinx."

He was regarding her with a strange, fixed attention. Now he thrust

his hands into the pockets of his jacket with a convulsive movement.

"You're something by way of being a sphinx yourself," he said

unsteadily.

Reaching behind her she slowly drew up the shawl until straight folds

of the material fell about her face. Then she extended a hand on

either knee and gazed before her. The imitation was admirable. Not a

feature or limb stirred. The sun penetrated the worn silken shawl and

vaguely defined her round little form. It gilded her forehead and chin

and traced a line of humid light along the lids of the eyes the pupils

of which were so obstinately contemplating Eternity. But what that

celestial body could not accomplish with its bold steady gaze, was

given to a mortal to achieve with a single glance. St. Ives bent over

her.

The sphinx was lost in the woman.

Throbbing with delicious dread, Rachel gave him her eyes. She returned

look for look, while her breathing ceased and her little hands, still

stretched along her knees, trembled. Lower and lower he bent his head,

higher and higher she lifted hers, to the length of its delicate,

palpitating throat. At the very brink--an ecstatic, troubled, reeling

pause, then--their lids sank, their lips met.

About them the insects continued their aggressive activity. A bee,

greedy for the last drop of honey, lit on a purple aster and the whole

light spray of blossoms swayed to his weight. The butterfly that had

lately visited Rachel's hand, joined its mate high up in the thin blue

air. From the branch of a sapling the thrush swelled its throat once

more in a joyful song. Ignorant that those two motionless heads

announced creatures differing in aught from themselves, the host of

creeping and winged things enrolled them for the nonce in their lists.

Rachel was the first to recoil from the caress. She drew

back,--sweetly ashamed, shyly-radiant, with that in her eyes a man

would have died rather than lessen.

But on Emil the shock of the caress had a contrary effect.

"In Heaven's name!" he cried, without looking at her, "forgive me."

The words leaped forth from his very heart. He wasn't half worthy that

kiss and he had the astonishing grace to know it.

As though any apology were necessary, however, as though events could

have happened otherwise! The kiss had been as sure to come as the

imminent meeting of evening with deep dark night. And so Rachel, by

her manner, seemed to say. In an anguish of expectancy she looked up

at him--ready to be assured, or ready to be stricken in her pride as

never maid was stricken before.

Before Emil could answer, Zarah Patch appeared round a turn of the

roadway. Concealed by hedges and clumps of shrubbery, his approach had

been unnoticed by the pair. Now he brought the white mare to a halt

while he shot a look at the girl. Some inkling of the gossip

concerning his friend's young granddaughter had reached even his old

ears.

"I'm going back to the Point directly, Rachel," he called, "be ye

inclined to come along?"

She sent a mute, tremulous question to Emil. His eyes were rivetted on

the ground. A powerful struggle was taking place within him. A desire

for love had flamed in his heart and, with his lips on hers, for one

brief fiery instant he had tasted the sweetness of his power over her.

None the less, what he now experienced was an intolerable sense of

shame. It set the seal of dignity on his ardour, if she had but

understood. But she totally misread him.

Pride sent up its secret cry: Perhaps he regretted the kiss, perhaps he

had no right to kiss her?

"Want to come along?" urged Zarah. "I've been hauling sod and the cart

is some muddied, but if yer'e keerful gittin' in, ye won't hurt yer

dress none."

Rachel suddenly signified her assent.

Emil raised his head in a singular and wild fashion. He made an

imploring gesture. But it was too late.

Under cover of a manner of perfect nonchalance she rose to the supposed

situation. Haughtily, under his fiercely-miserable eyes and the

curious eyes of the old man, she proceeded to the cart.

Emil strode forward. He looked passionate. But she ignored his

proffered hand and accepted Zarah's assistance into the cart. Once

perched on the high seat, she nodded proudly in the direction of him

whom she had so lately kissed.

Like many another woman if she could have erased the tender incident

from the scroll of her days, if she even could have told herself with

honesty that Emil had been the only moved one, she would willingly have

given half her life.

"But I kissed him back--I did! I did! and there's no use pretending

otherwise," she confessed in helpless stony abasement.

And throughout the night, in intervals of sleeplessness, she continued

to sigh because of the torturing memory.

CHAPTER XI

AT THE OLD BURYING POINT

By the next morning the incident just recorded had taken on to Rachel a

somewhat different tinge. Her sense of humiliation had so far abated

as to admit of her entertaining a feeling of pity for Emil. He

certainly had appeared a disconsolate and astounded figure as he stood

there gazing after her as she drove away. She wished now that she had

not left so precipitately, or, at least, that she had not declined his

proffered assistance when mounting into the cart.

By an altered reasoning the apology which had offended her yesterday,

now gratified her. As a gentleman who had been guilty of the grave

misdemeanour of kissing a lady, he could not have acted differently;

for she now thrust the entire blame of the incident on his masculine

shoulders. "It certainly was his fault in the first place," she

argued. And, having shifted the ground of resentment from the apology

for the kiss to the kiss itself, she resolved to forgive the wrong-doer.

The greater part of the day she spent in wandering on the shore of the

bay. Whenever she went there, instinctively she glanced at the mound

of sand where, on the occasion of their first meeting, she had seen

Emil bury the torn scraps of a letter. Not that she would have touched

the mound for the world, but the strictest would not censure a glance

of curiosity in that direction. Owing to its protection from the wind,

the little grave, strangely enough, had remained intact. But this

morning a scrap of paper appeared on the beach bearing, in what was

incontestably a woman's handwriting, the single word "Dearest."

Scarcely cognizant of what she did, Rachel, like a feminine Crusoe,

hovered over this bit of evidence on the sand. Like the legendary hero

her consciousness of being alone was destroyed, but with different

effect, for instead of an expression of surprise not unmixed with fear,

her look was one of suspicious misery.

"That letter was never from his mother," flashed through her mind.

"Old ladies don't make D's that way, so big and round,--but small and

trembly. No, whoever she is, she's young. Of course," reason

suggested, "the letter may have been written by some relative--by a

cousin, perhaps." The supposition was barely tenable.

With the keen brightness of eye that betokens jealousy, she remained

poised for the briefest fraction of time above the tantalizing find,

then she turned and pranced away. The instant devoted to the scrutiny

had been so short as to admit of scarcely more than half a heart-throb,

so short as scarcely to be termed a look at all, yet a sense of

dishonour was not lacking in her suffering.

She walked, stopped to think, shed a tear or two, and eventually grew

calm. What comforted her was the thought that Emil cared so little for

its writer that he had torn the letter into bits.

By afternoon her anxiety to forgive him for the misdemeanour of the day

previous had grown to such proportions as to drive her to the place of

meeting much earlier than usual; and waiting there still further

increased the feeling. When she saw him coming, she rose. Her arms,

hanging down her sides, trembled. She was all languor, all expectancy;

she was the desire for reconciliation incarnate. Yet even from a

distance, she knew that something was wrong. She turned upon him a

look of inquiry as he drew near with his hands sunk in his pockets and

his head lowered.

His face was clouded, his moustache curved downward, though when he

lifted his eyes to hers, into them flashed a warm and intensely

grateful smile. But the expression was succeeded by a gloomy one.

"Well, it's all over," he announced. "No need for me to have slaved

so. I'm thrown aside and someone else goes ahead and reaps the

profits."

"What do you mean?" she gasped.

"Mean? Why I mean that my delightful employers have stolen the press,

the sheets, the whole scheme. I wasn't quick enough and they got

someone else to finish the thing and applied for the patent."

"How do you know?"

"Oh, I've been informed all right," he said and from his pocket he drew

a letter.

Involuntarily Rachel extended her hand; then her face went white. On

the sheet that fluttered in his fingers she beheld the same childish

chirography that had appeared on the scrap of paper on the beach. Her

hand dropped.

"It's always the same," he went on, without noticing the change that

had come over her. And seating himself on the tomb, he took out his

pipe. Having filled it, he commenced to smoke, his eyes widely opened,

full of profound thought, fixed on vacancy.

"Not that it makes any difference," he continued philosophically after

a pause. "The world gets the benefit of the invention; as for me, I've

plenty of other things in my head. I'm not crying over spilt milk,"

and he looked up at her and laughed while the shining returned to his

glance. Reaching out toward her he tried to take her hand. This

movement, while bold, was not destitute of an appealing grace. It was

a mute reference to the kiss, to their changed relations; it was also a

demand for sympathy.

At any other time Rachel would not have resisted it, but now she

stepped out of his reach. "Who is it that informs you?" Her voice was

implacable.

He hesitated. "The daughter of one of my employers," he said in a low

tone. "She's stood by me from the first," he admitted. "She's been in

fact a--little trump." And then he sighed.

Rachel turned away her head. "I should think you'd go to her at once,"

she said. "I don't see why you wait here. There's a train at six."

Disconcerted, he got to his feet. Their eyes locked. He glowered upon

her.

"You might be able to protect your rights," she continued in a stinging

voice. "Then I should think, on _her_ account, if not on your

mother's, you'd make the attempt."

She saw the visible pang the mention of his mother occasioned.

"I will," he cried, "I'll go." And he held out his hand.

She saw that he shook from head to foot, and she knew that she had hurt

him mortally. But every force of her passionate nature had become

negative to all appeal from him. She could but stand with an impassive

face and bid him go, lest he court worldly failure instead of success.

And so they parted like strangers.

When he had passed from her sight, Rachel sank in a little heap on the

tomb. She bent her face on her knees. She felt as if a

sounding-instrument had gone to the very depths of her heart and

explored there among ambiguous weeds and mud, and as she listened to

the message that came back, she rocked backward and forward in a very

ecstasy of barren grief and shame. It seemed to her that she had

reached the burying point of life, and her sobs, quick with the agony

of youthful living, sounded small and piteous in that quiet place of

the dead.

CHAPTER XII

THE MIGRATORY INSTINCT

During the first weeks succeeding Emil's departure, Rachel looked

feverishly for a letter. It seemed to her the intensity of her longing

must cause one to appear. But none came, and finally she realized that

none would come. She went about with a curled lip and a scornful eye.

Nora Gage might run the house as she chose and cook as many savory

dishes as she pleased, the girl did not care; she was indifferent even

to her grandfather; but let the one or the other cross her will, and

her anger blazed forth. These violent outbursts were nature's defence.

In the painful upheaval that separated her dream from the reality, that

which was the very centre of her higher life, suffered to such an

extent that she must have become inert, had it not been for the

responsibility felt by all the ruder faculties of her hardy young

being. She had sought love, struggling albeit unconsciously, toward a

supposed freedom; and driven back on herself, she would have become

like a prisoner at the bottom of a cellar--bleeding, discouraged,

without further hope--had it not been for the nerves that proved

insurrectionary, for the temper that refused to be thwarted. The

activity of these rescuers gradually amazed the girl herself and drew

her from the contemplation of her trouble. But the experience, long

after the actual pain of it had given place to a general

dissatisfaction with existence, left its trace upon her face; and this

tempestuous beauty, wrought from within, played around her lips in a

smile of tragic comprehension and increased the range of her youthful

and expressive eye.

At home Nora dragged her slippers over the kitchen floor with a

flapping sound, and at "the barn," where even the occasional customer

had ceased to appear, André played wild airs upon his fiddle. Both

these sounds were intolerable to Rachel and, to escape them, she fled

to the cliffs. There, even as the cold weather came on, she sat for

hours, with her chin buried in her hands and her eyes on the ocean--the

ocean which, unfathomable and perpetually active, built itself into

gigantic walls that broke against the rocks with a reverberating report

and were sucked back emitting long murmurs.

Old David, thinking that he discovered in this preoccupation with the

sea a likeness to her father, approached Zarah Patch on the subject and

from a distance, screwing up their eyes in the sunlight, the two

ancient men observed her.

"It's her father's blood," explained old David, "often and often I seen

him look the same way."

"It's jest female feelings," Zarah affirmed, "she ain't rightly found

her rudder yet, and she's young. It's always so with women;"--a remark

of unusual length and penetration for Zarah.

Finally old David hit on a plan for diverting her, a plan, however,

which was destined to increase her malady rather than to cure it. In

the Old Harbour paper that once a week found its way to the Point,

there appeared an account of a private car fresh from the shops which,

for the purpose of conveying his family and friends to their home in

the city, had been brought to Old Harbour by a wealthy summer resident.

The car was stalled on a side track, and old David proposed to his

granddaughter that they go and see it.

It was a fine clear afternoon, and as the visit was in the nature of a

pleasure expedition, they drove beside Zarah Patch in his cart. As

they bowled along the road, the ruts of which were slightly stiffened

by the frost, old David talked continuously and Rachel found herself

listening.

"You know I used to work in the car shops at Philadelphy when I was a

young chap," he explained. "It was an immense sky-lighted place

covered with tracks and filled from one end to t'other with cars, some

old to be repainted and some entirely new. Winter was the time when

the old ones used to come troopin' back to us all faded and

travel-stained; they used to seem like old women whose finery was a

little gone-by, who came back to see how young and spruce they could be

made to look. And in the summer we fitted out the new ones, and they

of course was like young things jest preparin' fer their first venture

into the world.

"I tell ye," he continued, "I used to feel about them jest as if they

were human creatures. The men who worked there was called 'liners,'

'sign-writers,' 'hardwood-finishers,' 'decorators,' and 'rubbers-down.'

The 'rubbers-down' worked with emery-cloth and water, and oh my, didn't

they have to be careful about savin' the gold paint on the old cars,

though! For the letters and lines of gold on a car are always left to

stand, bein' as you might say, her jewellery," he added, with a

cackling laugh.

But when the little party descended at the station, the magnificence of

the new coach dazzled old David. He had never seen anything like it,

though this fact he strove to conceal.

"They used to decorate 'em more," he said, "they used to paint scrolls

along the sides, and between the winders they put on yaller tulips; and

to my mind, the cars was handsomer."

The ticket agent ran across the tracks to open the new coach and the

old man, to demonstrate his knowledge of the subject, began enumerating

the different classes of common cars. "'P.K.' is the best of 'em," he

proclaimed, "'P.K. Wide Vestibule'. But of course this car is

something a little extry."

When, however, the ticket agent had left them and they once more stood

looking up at the coach, he broke forth into lyric praise of it.

"'Tain't hardly been on the tracks, remember," he cried, "but think of

the miles and miles it has to run, through what different kinds of

country. It'll be like a good soldier followin' the leader! But the

engine! Oh, that's the master of 'em all!" he continued; "great,

shinin', pantin' master, that's what the engine is, the master."

Rachel looked at the car as at a traveller who is about to start on a

long journey. Once she had seen the wife of the owner with a party of

friends, and she began filling the seats of the new coach with these

people. Oh, the ladies, the softly-turned heads; the nicely-dressed

children--no common folk were to ride in this car! And she imagined

how they would be carried forward, the rolling of the wheels growing

ever swifter and swifter; and then how they would arrive at that spot,

glimmering with a million lights, tumultuous and confused, the city

containing great homes.

On the drive back to the Point, she closed her eyes the better to

pursue her thoughts, and her grandfather's words mingled with them like

something heard in a dream.

"Sometimes, not often, I used to paint station signs," he said, "and

after I'd finished the name of a place--maybe it was Kingston, or maybe

it was only Smithville,--I used to think how the sign would be hung at

the end of a long platform or perhaps jest posted against a little shed

of a buildin' in the midst of a great prairie, and I used to think of

the rain and the snow that'd blow against it, and most blot out the

letters, and the little birds that would perch on it; and somehow I

felt as if I had been to the places jest through paintin' of the signs."

Rachel pictured the earth webbed with tracks like veins, and she saw

the ships following certain appointed routes over seas; and again, as

in the past, it appeared to her that she was the one stagnant thing in

an active creation.

"But the signs I liked to paint best," resumed her grandfather's

tremulous voice, "were the _Stop-Look-Listen_ signs, and the

_Railroad-Crossin'--Look Out For The Engine_. They are made of cast

steel now and the letters are raised, but in my time they was of wood,

tall white posts with a pointin' arm, like ghosts givin' warnin'."

It seemed to the girl that at all costs she must set herself free and

become a part of a moving and active world. But how transgress the law

that had placed her there on the Maine coast, without experience and

without outlet for all the various capacities of her being? From that

time she began to coax her grandfather to leave Pemoquod.

"The president of the car shops who gave you this house," she began one

evening, winding her arms about his neck, "if you looked him up--"

"Nicholas Hart ain't in Philadelphy no longer," objected the old man.

"I seen in the papers years ago about the car shops failin' when he had

'em, and then about his movin' to New York City."

"Yes, I know that," she assented, "now if you looked him up, he'd

probably get you a nice easy position in New York. But I don't intend

you shall work much longer," she continued, "and that's just the point;

I ought to be doing something to support us both. But what can I do

here?"

In vain old David protested that he did not wish her to work, she

overruled him, the more easily because his ever-youthful heart was

pleased with the idea of a change. Then, too, he was lapsing into his

second childhood and as time went on he allowed himself to be guided

more and more by her.

Nora Gage was no match for the pair. She had conceived a fondness for

the kitchen, for the stove, for the very pots and pans; moreover, the

food that she was able to get in this house was to her liking,

especially now, when secure from observation, she fried, stirred and

seasoned to her heart's content. No longer driven to eat these

supplementary luncheons in the privacy of her own chamber, surrounded

by her mice like St. Francis by his birds, she ate when and where she

chose, even under the eyes of the abstracted girl. It must not be

concluded that she was ignorant of any detail of the plan that was on

foot. No one knew, better than she, through listening at the cracks of

doors, what was going forward. And anon she would be servile before

Rachel, through sheer apprehension, and again would rage inwardly to

think that the coming change in her fortunes was due to a brat of a

girl. The grandfather, by the force of that will which existed in the

depths of her being like a seldom-used sword in a scabbard, Nora could

have managed; but Rachel was beyond the range of her power. However,

when the announcement of the great news was finally made to her, her

plea was ready.

"And what's to become of me, miss?" she demanded. "For more years than

ye've lived I've served yer grandfather faithful, and now at a word

from ye I'm turned off with no place to go."

Rachel, sitting on the arm of her grandfather's chair, regarded the

housekeeper coldly. "Why can't you go back in the meat-market with

your cousin?" she asked; "grandfather says you used to be there."

"Yes, but his son's growed up now and he don't need me," and Nora began

to turn a corner of her apron over one stodgy finger. "It was jest as

my friends warned me," she whimpered, "they said I'd be sorry if I

stayed on here after yer mother died. I've sacrificed everything for

ye two and ye don't seem to know it." She ended with a guttural sob.

Rachel scanned her with a swift glance from head to foot. "What have

you sacrificed for us?" she asked. "Haven't you been paid?"

"Yes, but there's some things that can't be paid for," Nora muttered.

"A woman can't stay in a man's house the way I have without its costing

her dear."

The girl stared, then the clear colour stained her face. "Nonsense!"

she cried.

"It may seem nonsense to you, miss," Nora retorted, "I can well

understand that it do--actin' as you did awhile back. But it ain't

nonsense to the world. I might as well be like that poor thing at the

lighthouse 'stead of the decent woman I am, as far as the world knows.

I've give up everything for ye two, that's what I have, and this is the

way I git treated," and she began sobbing in earnest.

The old man gazed from one to the other in bewilderment. He saw his

granddaughter rise and heard her draw a sharp breath, and he saw the

housekeeper cower and drop her eyes.

Rachel passed to a window and stood there for some seconds; then a

whiff of cookery from the kitchen stirred in her a kind of pity.

Through a crack of the door was revealed that for which Nora struggled

and schemed. To have food in plenty, greasy, rich food, this was the

one desire of Nora's life.

"Grandfather," she said softly and a little wearily, without looking at

the woman, "if you are willing, we'll take Nora with us."

Of all this interesting parley which betrayed itself in the

late-burning lamp at the Beckett house, André Garins caught not an

inkling. He slept above in the lighthouse, or, when chance favoured,

below in his bed; and cut off as he was from news, he remained ignorant

of the proposed flight.

Occasionally, after he had polished the crystal lenses and the brass

trimmings of the lantern, his duties over for the day, he tapped at the

Beckett door; but Rachel was too busy to see him: and to escape the

belligerent eyes of Captain Daniels who drank secretly but heavily as

the cold weather came on, he betook himself to the deserted barn.

Blown upon by all the winds of heaven, with whisperings at every crack

and meanings in its loosened timbers, "the barn" was André's retreat.

Far from finding it dismal, he had only to light a fire in the cracked

stove and whip out his fiddle; and henceforth, it became a cheerful and

friendly abode. He was too close to nature to be rendered unhappy by

mere loneliness. The booming of the sea against the cliffs and the

sighing of the wind in the vastnesses of the sedgegrass, but lit in him

a fiercer gayety.

Up to this time André had resembled one of those unobtrusive plants

which encumber the highway, but which are apt to escape notice until

the flowering season. He was as handsome as an animal, a child or any

other natural thing, and of the primitive soul at the bottom of him,

his large and rolling eye revealed little. But the hour comes when the

humble flower arrests our attention, if only for the fraction of a

moment, by opening a corolla of exquisite perfection.

It was on a day in late autumn after the first snow had vanished from

the earth, leaving it wistful and half-chastened, that Rachel sought

out André. It was to be expected that her schoolfellow would feel

sharp regret at her news, and for this reason she had delayed

enlightening him until the last moment. They stood some distance from

"the barn" in the pale sunlight and as she began to speak, he looked

straight into her eyes with a kind of uncomprehending terror. Scarcely

had she finished when he sank to the ground as if felled by a blow.

"Say you didn't mean it," he moaned, and at her dress she felt his

clinging hands while his forehead rested hot against her feet.

She lifted his head and saw his mouth twisting like a child's, while

from his eyes poured two steady streams of tears.

"Why André!" she cried, and with a movement of almost maternal

compassion, she put her arms about him. Thus drawn against the sky,

the young pair vaguely suggested the group of Niobe and her child.

"Say you won't leave me," he moaned, "say we'll be married and you'll

never, never leave me."

Softly she stroked his hair while gazing straight before her. Through

a sort of prescience she knew that this humble and suppliant love was

sweeter and more fathomless than anything that would come to her again.

"No, André dear," she said finally, "I can't stay just living on day

after day, and all the days just alike; I can't because there's

something _here_," and she touched her heart, "that won't let me. All

the same," she continued, "I'm not sure that you're not wiser. You'll

stay here patiently, and, after a fashion, you'll be happy, I suppose.

But it won't be that way with me," she added, with a prophetic shake of

the head; "I shall not be patient and so--"

But André comprehended nothing save the fact that the innermost hope of

his being was in ruins. He was sobbing now with even more abandon and

through the texture of her dress Rachel felt the pure warmth of his

tears.

"Look, André," she said, "do you see that they are burning wrecks down

there--the lumber of those fishing boats that came ashore last spring.

Why are they doing it?"

He raised his wet eyes and followed the direction of her pointing

finger.

"It's because they want to use the iron bolts that screw them

together," she continued. "In just the same way, life treats us--like

wrecked barks, and the flames sweep over us, so that at last all that

is left is the iron strength of us." She finished almost in a whisper,

as if she had forgotten him.

It was clear that André's soul would continue to cling to her soul like

the lichen to the wood, the ivy to the tree. And this he knew, even

while he mourned the material separation.

Presently more matter-of-fact words brought him to himself. He ceased

weeping, and rising, stood at her bidding.

"You'll see about the trunk lock," she said, "right away; and you'll

meet grandfather and go with him to buy the tickets. I'll see you

again in the morning, but this is the real goodbye."

His face was as calm as hers now, even the longing in it had died.

Seeing him thus--being no Spartan, but soft woman every inch--her arms

went about his neck and her lips met his. While the two young

creatures stood thus the sun, faintly pink, sank into the sea and a

cold wind blew over the land.

Rachel had disappeared but André had gone scarcely a hundred yards when

he flung himself face downward. With his hands knotted among the

sedgegrass, he wept without sound. A locust that had been lured from

its retreat by the warmth of the day, looked at him from the stalk of a

plantain, then changed its location to less violently agitated

quarters; only the shaking of some denuded stalks marked where the boy

lay.

Because of the insubmission, bravery and perseverance of a young girl,

the old weather-beaten house of the former lobsterman was forsaken. No

more would its rooms echo to the sound of voices, and footsteps would

no more pass its thresholds; its doors were closed. The sunlight would

penetrate into its unused rooms and trace the accustomed pattern on

floor and wall; no one would know. And on roof and steps the rain

would beat its old friendly reveille. Sagging in roof and beam under

the drifted snow of winter, denuded in summer of shutter and shingle,

gradually the abandoned house would disappear from the landscape;

little by little it would vanish like a nest that the birds have

forsaken.

When the hour for the departure arrived, several of the good wives of

the Point appeared. They formed a little group around Rachel. One of

them straightened her hat, another retied the scarf around her neck;

then they shook hands with her gravely, looking at her with dimmed

eyes. Rachel strained her gaze in the direction of the lighthouse and

saw Lizzie Goodenough standing with a parcel in her hands. Instantly

the girl darted up the rocky path and the two embraced, while the

others exchanged glances.

Old David, all eagerness to be off, had clambered into the cart in

which a quantity of household gear had been packed, and sat there

holding the reins; while Zarah Patch helped André bring out the one

trunk and several bags and boxes. At last all was in readiness, when

Nora Gage discovered an important item of luncheon unprepared for

transportation. Several baskets were offered, and in the confusion,

Rachel made her escape.

Arrived at the bay shore, flushed and panting, she stooped with a

graceful movement and laid her cheek against the wreck, while with her

hand she patted that shadowy collection of letters that still in washed

out reds and blues formed a name no wind nor tide could efface.

_Defender_! Warped, dislocated, destroyed, its tarry timbers pierced

with innumerable holes, its dismal hulk filled with the last lamentable

cargo of seawrack and sand, the wreck lifted its broken ribs like arms

toward the girl. From what would it restrain her? From what did it

seek to defend her?

Rising, she approached and stood before the figure-head, and the

figure-head looked back at her and, as it were, over and beyond her.

With a timid movement, Rachel kissed this old comrade also. Then she

ran away, and a moment later she looked back, and there she saw

her--that "great-kneed, deep-breasted" Goddess of Hope--with her face

set toward the Unknown,--valiant, free!

BOOK II

CHAPTER I

THE STREET OF MASTS

"He saw you in the shop that time long ago, Grandfather, and understood

that the paint had affected you?"

"Yes, it were the lead in the white paint that poisoned me," agreed

David; "I'd been paintin' cattle cars pretty stiddy, which was a job

most on 'em tried to skip."

"I see, and the superintendent told Mr. Hart how faithfully you'd

worked and the result was that he sent you this letter with a deed for

the house at the Point. It shows that he thought a great deal of you;

and even if we shouldn't be able to find him," she continued with a

shade of apprehension, "it seems to me this letter, old as it is, ought

to help in getting you some sort of a position, just temporarily."

"But it ain't _some_ sort of a position I'm wantin'," the other

objected, "it's a railroad position; and though railroad corporations

is one thing," he continued, "and car shops is another, still they do

business together constant; and I guess we'll find the Big Middletown

people know all about Nicholas Hart when we ask 'em."

And so these two, the one so lately emerged from childhood and the

other just reëntering it, started on their quest, and from their eyes

looked out the same innocence, ignorance and unquenchable hope.

"I'll feel safer about Grandfather when he's occupied," thought the

girl, "but it must be light work, I'll insist upon that; and then

directly I'll find something to do myself."

Since their arrival in the city a fortnight before, old David had

manifested a growing irresponsibility. Deprived of his accustomed

occupations and transferred to the streets of the metropolis, he had

become like a ship without a rudder. So far, his driftings had been as

pleasant as they were aimless, but more than once he had been lost,

more than once, following the lead of his errant curiosity, had barely

escaped serious accident. And there was no telling how soon the

threatening dangers of the new existence might overwhelm him.

Insensibly, in the midst of his delight, he looked to the young girl

for guidance. She it was who had settled them in their present

quarters, three small rooms at the top of an old building in lower New

York, rooms selected because of their cheapness and because two windows

overlooked a wharf at which foreign ships were tethered while a third

window looked toward the west. She it was who had added to their

meagre stock of house plenishings at push-carts and cheap shops.

Indeed, she it was who had assumed entire responsibility for the

undertaking.

Nora Gage, who now received a lower wage than formerly, and in

consequence performed only such duties as she chose, grumbled

constantly. The poor fare on which Rachel and the old man subsisted

filled her with disgust, and she would have gratified her gastronomic

preferences out of her savings of twenty years, had it not been that

the queer foreign foods, in which the markets of the neighbourhood

abounded, were not to her taste. Even old David at moments was

inclined to be fractious, and Rachel, who had wilfully played the part

of Fate to these two, was forced to listen as patiently as she could to

their criticisms.

On the afternoon in question when she emerged from the house with her

grandfather, the old man scowled; for the street was dank with mist and

clamorous with the roar of the nearby "elevated."

"This ain't a nice street," he complained, "I don't like the smell on

it, and with everything swallowed up in the fog so, we can't see the

only thing worth seein'--the ships."

"But perhaps we can later; when we come back the fog may be gone,"

Rachel comforted him. However, a touch of the cold and damp seemed to

threaten her own heart.

By dint of timid inquiries, at the end of two hours' weary searching,

the bewildered pair found themselves in a Broadway office of the

Middletown road. But the clerk to whom they made known their quest,

shook his small, well-combed head at them.

"It's to Philadelphia you ought to have gone, Uncle," he said, while a

smile wrinkled the flesh beneath his prominent eyes. "We know nothing

about your car shops here. As for this letter, it's a bit ancient,"

and he handed it back.

Rachel flushed. "My grandfather wishes to obtain work in New York,"

she said. "We showed you the letter merely as a credential, thinking

perhaps you might know Mr. Nicholas Hart--if he is still living," she

added with a pang of fear.

The man glanced at the handsome girl and the boldness, the

indestructible animation of sex, flashed in his pale eyes. "I'm

sorry," he said in a voice which he strove to make respectful, "but I

do not know him. However, I've no doubt if you go--"

"Is it Nicholas Hart you're speaking of?" interrupted an older clerk

who had been an interested listener to the conversation. "Yes, he's

still living, I think. Years ago he used to be one of the owners of

the car shops in Philadelphia; that's right. If I'm not mistaken he's

living now with his son Simon Hart who is a jeweller in some street in

the Thirties. Here, I'll look him up for you. The residence is near

Washington Arch," he added, returning after a moment; "I've written the

address on this card."

Rachel thanked him and, ignoring the younger clerk who ran officiously

to open the door for them, she passed out, followed by old David.

"Now wasn't that the slickest thing ye ever saw," he exulted, "I told

ye how folks, especially the older ones, would know all about Nicholas

Hart. We can walk there, can't we, Rachel?"

"We can walk part of the way," she responded with a sigh.

From childhood she had been taught to look upon Nicholas Hart as a

benefactor and in her dreams it had been to him that she had seen

herself appealing for advice. Now the fact that Nicholas Hart, in case

they were fortunate enough to find him, would be an old man, entered

her mind for the first time.

Young and serious, she walked on lost in meditation, merely keeping a

restraining hand upon her grandfather, who threatened every moment to

quit her side. His eyes under his white tufted eyebrows shone like

sapphires and an innocent and childlike delight radiated from him.

More than one jaded pedestrian turned to look after the refreshing pair

who, in that crowded Broadway, suggested a hooded violet and a slightly

withered buttercup blowing in the sun.

When they reached the space in front of the Herald building, old David

planted himself on the walk and insisted on waiting until the two

bronze figures above the clock struck the hour; but when they reached

the Farragut statue he sank down on the architectural seat.

"These pavements don't give none," he said plaintively.

"We'll just rest a minute," Rachel soothed him.

With a tender movement she placed the end of her worn scarf around his

neck and forced him to lean his head on her shoulder. Almost at once

he fell into the light slumber which is nature's most beneficent gift

to infancy and old age.

Under the rays of the February sun the mist had disappeared and in the

air there was a springlike warmth. Rachel, turning her head, read the

words of the inscription traced on the back of the seat; then her eyes

travelled upward to the Admiral, who, by his staunch and determined

air, seemed to convert the stone base into the deck of a vessel. And

immediately the city ceased to terrify her and bravery rose in her in a

flood.

The Hart house had once been a cheerful mansion, but its home-like

aspect had long since given place to an air of cold and pathetic

reserve.

The knock was answered by a smartly-dressed maid with a crafty yet

heedless air. On Rachel's inquiring for Mr. Nicholas Hart, the girl

eyed them with sharp suspicion.

"Mr. Hart don't ever see anyone," she said.

"He once showed my grandfather a great kindness," Rachel explained,

"and I thought perhaps he might remember--"

"He don't remember much," interrupted the other; "but I suppose you can

go along up," she admitted, after a further scrutiny of the pair from

whom, it was clear, there was nothing to fear. "He remembers faces

sometimes; you'll have to climb the stairs though," she added

maliciously.

Rachel helped her grandfather up the three flights of stairs and the

servant rapped on the attic door.

"Come in," piped a voice which sounded like the note of a cracked

flute. And old David and Rachel entered.

The attic was wide and sunny and in the recess of a gable window stood

a very little old man with a face fair and pink as a child's and with a

skull cap on the back of his white head. He turned with one delicate

hand resting on the barrel of a microscope. On perceiving the servant

his eyes grew round with fury.

"Get out of here!" he shrilled, and, ignoring the strangers, he flew

straight at the maid, skipping over the floor with remarkable

briskness, his coat-tails moving like the wings of a maddened bird.

The girl retreated with a laugh.

Old David presented his letter. In the presence of his host, who was

as airy and, seemingly as fragile-lived as a figure traced upon a

window-pane of a frosty morning, old David appeared endowed with the

sturdiness of youth. "Years ago when I was a paintin' of cars," he

began; but Nicholas Hart sent the letter, from which he had not removed

the envelope, whirling across the floor.

"Cars," he cried, "run on wheels, but look at these wings,--" and with

a finger shaking with excitement he pointed to the microscope. "Don't

they beat all the wheels in creation?" he demanded.

In answer to his gesture, old David peeped timidly into the instrument;

then he straightened himself and the face which he turned toward the

other expressed a world of simple wonderment.

"Eh, what did I tell you?" exclaimed Nicholas exultingly. "And look

here! and here!" he cried, placing one slide after another under the

lens.

Finding herself forgotten, Rachel left the absorbed pair and went

downstairs to wait for her grandfather. Her glimpse of Nicholas Hart

had convinced her that no help could be expected from him.

"I told you he wasn't used to seeing folks," commented the maid who

appeared in the hall. "He's touched here," and she indicated her head.

"He thinks I mean to destroy a book he's writing about the house-fly,

because once I mixed up his papers. Your grandfather's all right that

way, is he?" she asked.

"Certainly he is," responded Rachel, and after a few further remarks

that elicited no reply, the servant retreated. But from the dining

room, where she rather obviously engaged herself with some sewing, she

kept strict watch over the stranger.

Rachel, seated on a low settle, threw an indifferent glance about her.

Then, almost insensibly her attitude changed. She was seized with an

indefinable feeling. This house, with its purely masculine

furnishings, for some reason suggested to her mind the image of a life

darkened and repressed. The hall, the drawing-room, the dining room

were like a succession of gloomy thoughts. Portieres, rich in texture

but indeterminate in hue, outlined the doors with their dismal folds;

and the drawing-room chairs and armchairs were upholstered in rep of

the same shade.

In the drawing-room the mantel-piece was adorned with an ill-assorted

collection of candle-sticks, match-safes, inlaid boxes; and in the

centre was an elaborate clock of an elegant modern design, violently at

odds with the homely daguerreotype of a woman which flanked it on one

side and a vase of an ugly pattern on the other. A nude figure,

atrociously modelled, supported the vase in the form of a flower and

might have been kissing a hand to the patient becapped countenance in

the daguerreotype; otherwise the various objects bore no closer

relation one to another than the articles on the counter in a shop. On

the floor, before a pier-glass, was a plate on a support of twisted

wire. Household gods were present in abundance, but chilly, silent,

they imparted no charm of life to the vastness of the apartment.

In the dining room, however, this effect was slightly modified. It was

the room apparently where the master spent most of his time when at

home; and, as if in preparation for his arrival, a discreet fire had

been started in the grate. Unlike the more material accessories, the

fire did all that it could to impart its own peculiar charm to the

room. It leaped as high as possible; its beams were reflected in the

polished case of the pianola, its rays were caught by the glass doors

of the cupboard which contained the records, its gleams were imprisoned

in tangled rainbows in the cut glass and silver of the sideboard. The

laughing light, indeed, like an impolite guest, seemed, in the absence

of the host, to occupy the table laid staidly for one, and delicately

to help itself to the wine, to the fruit, to all that the board held,

with rosy, caressing, immaterial fingers.

Toward this distant point of comparative cheer Rachel turned her eyes

with troubled interest. To the finely organized there are in life few,

if any, absolutely unheralded events. Now she hung over the problem of

the personality suggested by these surroundings with a tremour of

premonition--a fact which she recalled later with amazement.

Presently a latch key grated in the lock and the street door was opened

with extreme caution. A gentleman entered wrapped in a long overcoat.

He did not immediately perceive Rachel. Divesting himself of the coat,

he blew imaginary particles of dust from its sable collar and hung it

on the rack; then he removed his hat and disclosed a long head, bare on

top, and trimmed with a sparse fringe of hair. This hair he proceeded

to smooth into place with quick motions of his hands; he even drew his

fingers through it. Then he turned round.

Her scrutiny was older than his, and the prophetic, vague apprehension

had mounted, mounted. She glanced aside; he could not.

There are moments when surprise stirs a mind like a stick thrust into a

pool. The ordinarily clear surface of the water reveals sodden leaves,

mud, perhaps even shrinking plants; the eye usually enigmatic,

unfathomable, reveals hidden weaknesses, sins, temerities. When he

beheld her, a young girl, seated in his hall, in Simon Hart's hollow

cheek the blood slowly mantled. He was as clean-shaven as a monk, save

for the barely indicated line of a moustache above the narrow lips.

His nose was handsome, though pointed; his chin was cleft. One ear was

a little higher than the other.

After a perceptible pause he passed her, bowing slightly, and proceeded

through the drawing-room with his soft tread. His legs were short, but

his shoulders and head were imposing. He was like a building begun by

a carpenter and finished by an architect.

In the dining room he approached the sideboard and poured some liquor

from a decanter. He did not, however, drink the liquor, but stood

holding the glass. And this vision of him was reflected in the dining

room mirror, caught again in the small mirror above the hall-rack and

repeated indefinitely in the bevellings. Rachel was unfamiliar with

Piranesi's series of engravings in which the artist is represented

climbing an everlasting staircase, or this multiplied vision of Simon

Hart, continued through one room after another, until he disappeared

with his glass in the border of the last mirror, might have suggested

to her a similar allegory. She directed toward him a second glance,

wistful, unconsciously searching, and at that moment her grandfather

descended the stairs and the servant appeared to show them out. In the

open Rachel straightway forgot all presentiments and the meeting wore

in her memory an aspect ordinary enough.

Old David was elated. "I tell ye, I never see anything like what he's

got up there," he cried. "There's butterfly wings all sparklin' with

jewels, and mosquito legs--"

Rachel taking his arm, guided him toward a car. Not an allusion to the

real object of the call fell from the old man's lips. All memory of

their purpose had apparently escaped him on the instant of his

introduction into that sphere of ideal beauties. His face shone like a

child's. Looking at him Rachel smiled a little sadly. How absolutely

irresponsible he was, and how she had erred when she had withdrawn him

from the simple duties which had acted as an anchor for his fantastic

mind. Yet was not that which he expressed the highest poetry? The

essence of an abstract delight was in him and shone through him,

transforming his aged frame as an elixir transforms the delicate goblet

that contains it. His eyes blazed, his lips were wreathed in smiles,

and suddenly he no longer seemed to her an old man entering the drear

regions of second childhood, but a seer, a bard, a singing poet,

chanting a chant of Beauty, which is immortal. And because she was

spirit of his spirit as well as flesh of his flesh, she nestled to him;

and, seated side by side, they were conveyed rapidly through the city

which resounded with the unparalleled bustle and confusion that

precedes the subsidence and comparative silence of the night.

When they descended from the elevated station and turned into the

"Street of Masts," as old David termed the alley in which they lived,

he paused, "Jest--look a there!" he said, and extended a finger.

The sun shone on the muddy pools beside the road and into the

inexpressibly weary eyes of horses. It glinted on the hair of the

ragged children swarming in the doorways and put an added blush on the

cheeks of apples swinging by the stems at the doors of tiny fruit shops

and on stands. It made the outlines of factory stacks indistinct,

enveloped in a haze. The sun, shining through streaks and trails and

plumes of smoke, made the city appear to be waving flags of glory--the

glory of a dream.

"And the ships--let's go and see what they've brought in," whispered

the old man, and, in a kind of awe, the two approached the wharf where

were ranged those patient, graceful visitors from foreign ports.

Their masts towering against the sky, the ships suggested a fantastic

forest, or a chimerical orchard, for the undulations of the water

imparted to them a gentle motion, so that they seemed to be in the act

of shedding their gracious and varied fruits on the wharf. There were

skins of mountain goats from Switzerland, and elephant tusks from

Egypt; there was oil golden with the sunlight of Italy and there were

winecasks bursting with the purple sweetness of her vineyards. There

were bales of textile fabrics from China, there were strange-leaved

plants, with their roots bound tightly in canvas, from the isles of

Bermuda. It seemed to Rachel that all these fruits from every land and

clime were treasures poured bounteously into the lap of a mystical

city; and the last vestige of that fear, so foreign to her nature and

so little to be harboured there in all the coming years, vanished from

her heart. Were they not, she asked herself, in the land of

fulfilment, in the city of realized dreams?

CHAPTER II

EMILY SHORT--TOY-MAKER

When the bells of St. Joseph trembled into motion, Emily Short opened

her eyes; when those inverted cups of bronze began to move faster,

flinging their summons over the roofs, tossing it in at open windows,

emptying it into narrow courts, she arose. When the parish father,

still half asleep, donned his robes and straightened his stole, she put

the last pin in her collar and tied on her apron. When he began to say

mass, she began to hum a tune; and as the high-sounding Latin escaped

through the trefoiled windows, her artless warble escaped through the

attic casement, and together the two strains, the one from the heart of

the Church and the other from the heart of a woman, ascended straight

to the throne of the good God and who shall say they were not equally

acceptable?

Outwardly Emily was no friend of the church. Its frequent services,

she declared, were disturbing, and a room on the other side of the

house with a view of the ships and the wharfage would have been a deal

more to her mind. However, it was noticeable that whenever one of these

rooms fell vacant she held her peace and abode in her attic as tightly

as a limpet in its shell when danger is toward. It must be confessed

that she clung to the church very much as a limpet clings to its chosen

rock. For forty years she had lived close to the church, for forty

years been keenly alive to its spirit of consolation. Though

unencumbered with a creed, Emily was a staunch reformer and the church

represented a strong ally.

On a summer morning, by merely craning her neck, she could peer down

through an open window and learn who were present of her special

following. If she spied the old charwoman, whose honesty was not above

suspicion, or Dan, who stole grain on the wharves, she nodded her head

with satisfaction. It was more than possible, she considered, even if

the priest's exhortations were lost on their befuddled minds, that the

pure strong notes of the organ might reach their consciences, the

beautiful colours of the windows cause some expansion of their dwarfed

souls. So she completed her survey like an inquiring angel, then

settled to her work of the day.

Emily trimmed hats, furnishing them for a Division Street milliner, and

earned a very comfortable livelihood; for she trimmed with an abandon,

a daring, a freedom that no other trimmer could equal. That she might

have full scope for the expression of her individuality, she was

granted the privilege of working at home instead of under the eye of

her employer. She was regarded as an artist, and more than once her

creations had changed the prevailing styles in that section. If Emily,

canny soul, had her own ideas about the beauty of her hats, she kept

them to herself and it is not for me to reveal them. It was sufficient

that the hats suited the heads they were intended to adorn. Humming

under her breath, she curled and looped and tied and twisted with such

swiftness that the room was filled with the shimmer of satin, the

flutter of laces, the darting of wings, the bursting of flowers; and so

unremitting was her industry that by night the wire frames, delivered

to her in the morning, had been converted into veritable traps for the

captivation of men's hearts.

Working away through the long hours, all the vanity that had never

found expression in her own life, flew into her needle; she placed

feathers at an irresistible angle, sewed buckles and bows in telling

positions. When she fared along the streets, quiet and demure,

carrying her great pile of boxes, who would have guessed that she was a

great matchmaker? Yet such was the case. And when she met one of her

creations, brave and flaunting as youth itself, accompanied by a male

hat, she knew that her work was succeeding. When the hats proclaimed a

maid and a lad, her spirits rose; but when they proclaimed an errant

wife and her admirer, her spirits clouded.

For once they had left her hands with all their potency for good or

evil, Emily had no more control over her hats than a parent over the

children that have quitted the hearth. Sometimes her pangs were so

sharp at what she witnessed that for days she trimmed with a sobriety,

a propriety that was the despair of her employers. Indeed, she fairly

sewed a sermon into the hats until a protest of loud-voiced dismay

stayed her hand. Thereupon the full tide of her remorse was diverted

into another channel.

All who came to her she helped, as was her custom, with money, with

food, with influence; but her lectures, always forcible, now became

inspired. She rated them eloquently, and such an admiration did she

exhibit for virtue, and such detestation for evil, that the indigent,

the drunken, the lazy, went away not only consoled but strengthened in

the "inner man."

Emily's philosophy was comprehended in one word. Work for brain and

hand, body and soul,--work was the world's salvation, she declared; and

right staunchly, in her own life, did she demonstrate the truth of this

theory. Nor did her labours cease with the hours of daylight.

The setting of the sun witnessed a change in her occupation. With the

lighting of the gas all the hats that had not been delivered, went to

roost, like an array of tropical birds, behind a curtain; and from a

corner where it had stood neglected all day, came forth her little

work-bench. Forthwith Emily began the practice of the cunning craft

that was to her the highest of the arts. Between the fine ardour of

the youthful Cellini, as he approached his delicate metals after an

irksome day in his father's shop, and Emily's grave exaltation as she

seated herself at the bench, there was not the difference of a jot.

The thing that we create matters nothing, the divine desire to create

is all; and whether we design a medal for a pontiff's honour or a toy

for a child's delight, the object is but a little door through which

the soul wings to freedom.

Emily had a dream, an ambition. Her ambition was to make toys and one

day to see a whole army of them performing on the walks of the popular

uptown districts where shoppers throng. To this end she twisted wires

with her claw-like fingers, and, as she lacked the proper tools, her

fingers were often bruised; to this end she soldered together and

hammered into shape. And right fairly did her toys represent her, for,

disgusted with the laziness of humanity, Emily endowed her race of tiny

men and women with a perfect passion for industry. They seemed

obsessed with the notion, and though the work that engaged them would

still be unfinished when the spring of their life ran down, was not

this the crowning fact in the history of all brave effort? So Emily

continued to announce her theory even through her toys.

On a certain sultry morning she had barely settled herself near the

window and carefully threaded her first needle, when she dropped the

work in her lap.

"There, I haven't made the acquaintance of that child yet," she

murmured. "Judging from the smell of cooking they have enough to eat.

But something's amiss and I must get her to tell me what it is."

Chance favoured Emily, for that evening as she was starting forth with

a load of bright-coloured bandboxes, she encountered her youthful

neighbour. The girl was mounting the stairs languidly. The warm

weather had sapped her vitality, already undermined by the air of the

city. Emily nodded cheerily, and purposely let fall one of the boxes.

Rachel turned.

"Here, I'll pick it up for you," she cried; then, after a moment,

"Won't you let me help you with them? I can do it as well as not."

Together they emerged into the lighted street.

Though she looked about her with a kind of wistful wonderment, the

sordidness of the scenes through which they passed, did not seem really

to touch Rachel. Emily kept glancing at her and marked how her

childish passionateness was mingled with a suggestive reticence. It

was clear that some saddening experience had already come to her.

"Poor lamb!" muttered Emily. When a man with a lurching gait passed

too close to Rachel, Emily nudged him savagely with the boxes; and when

they turned into Division Street, not one of the crew of strident women

who solicit trade for the shops, dared to accost her young charge. Not

a few of these poor creatures, recognizing Emily, ceased long enough in

their chant of "Nice hats! pretty hats!" to give the popular trimmer

"good-evening."

Joseph Stedenthal's "Emporium" boasted a millinery department, of which

his wife had charge, and a general merchandise and furniture department

over which he himself presided. Everything the push-carts furnished,

he furnished a little cheaper--at least a penny cheaper; and this

stock, as proclaimed by his advertisement, was "displayed to invite the

refined mind."

Joseph Stedenthal, staunchly backed by his wife and daughter, expressed

a profound scorn for the push-carts and for all who bought and sold

therefrom, and never in the bosom of his family was it hinted that he

himself, in a not too remote past, had prospered finely as the owner of

a cart. Now he had a dignified air of superiority, and only women who

did not go bare-headed, came to his shop, women who made some pretence

to style. His was the "exclusive" shop of the street.

Mrs. Stedenthal was in her husband's part of the shop when Emily and

Rachel entered the "millinery section." Emily seated herself on a high

stool and motioned Rachel to do the same. Joseph Stedenthal's voice

came to them from a distance. He was thundering with wrath.

"Shame upon you, talking mit the salesmen! Go you up-stairs, I tell

you!"

A young girl with flaming cheeks flashed by the door and ascended the

stairs.

"I ain't talking to him. I just asked him how much he sold it for,"

she screamed back.

"You were talking mit the salesmen! All times you talk mit them. And

that I will not--I shall not have!"

His tirade was interrupted by the teasing voice of a woman.

"There, there, Joseph, give me one little kiss! You know how much you

lofe me."

There was an explosion of wrath and a woman, rolling in flesh, shaking

with laughter, entered the millinery shop. She nodded to Emily, still

smiling; but in spite of the merriment that convulsed her, she examined

the hats attentively and counted the money very carefully into the

other's hand. One of the hats she declined to pay for until the

trimming was changed.

"All times you make 'em too dark, Miss Short,--too dark, like a

hearse," she remonstrated affably; "put a little more red on it."

When Rachel, following Emily, once more gained the street, her tender

face was clouded.

Men, women, children; hats, socks, coats; candles, worn-out books;

dirt, dirt, dirt! Men, men, men, bearded, unkempt, bedraggled,

saddened, stupid, hungry! Under each coat, each gown was a living

heart, struggling to keep its life. In every eye was a demand; in too

few hands were the coppers to buy--not the pears, the grapes, the

oranges that grow in Hester Street as in an orchard--but the great

black loaves of bread, round, twisted, covered with a strange kind of

seed. Coppers were lacking to buy milk for the starving, anemic baby,

dirty-faced, struggling over the floor of the tenement; lacking for the

shoes,--thirty pennies enough--for the shoes of little Johnnie that he

might go to school: pennies lacking for the whiskey and the

beer,--pennies that must be cheated for, thieved for, murdered

for,--the all-necessary pennies for the drink.

Separated from the life about her, Rachel was yet united to it, she was

a part of it, and she drew her breath sharply. But should she be less

brave than these others? Emily, who divined what was passing within

her, came to a decision.

"You've been a great help with the boxes, Miss Beckett," she said

cheerfully when they reached the house and mounted the stairs; "now you

come along in for a cup of tea."

To the lonely girl the little toy-maker's room wore a grateful air of

comfort. Emily placed her in a rocking-chair where she could see the

windows of the church; then she bustled about preparing the tea. She

had just handed a cup to Rachel when there came a rap on the door;

before Emily could open it a pretty light-haired girl stood on the

threshold. She was dressed in a starched waist and a plaid skirt and

the eyes under her smart hat showed red rims.

"It's all over," she cried, ignoring Rachel's presence. "I've got to

leave my position, Miss Short. It's all along of Tom. The president

called me into his office to-day and said right out, either I could

stop letting his son come to see me, or I could leave. He gave me my

choice. And you better believe I wasn't long choosing. I told him I'd

see whom I pleased, and if Mr. Colby liked to come and call on me

perfectly proper, like any other gentleman, I shouldn't stop him. So I

got notice."

The girl blazed with defiance, but, in spite of her bravado, she was

once more on the brink of tears. Her bosom rose and sank tumultuously,

her full red lips gathered into a pout, her little hands, dimpled like

an infant's, rested on her hips. She was a child too soon imprisoned

in the rich envelope of womanhood. On every lineament of her pretty,

pathetic, excited face potential weakness was stamped.

Emily scrutinized her for a moment in silence. Still without

expressing an opinion, she replaced the kettle on the gas stove; then

she looked at the new-comer gravely:

"Miss Beckett, this is Miss Holden. Have you anything else to turn to,

Betty?" she asked.

The other shook her head. "I haven't, but I'm going to an agency

to-morrow. I thought I'd just stop in and tell you. No, thanks, I

won't wait for tea. Tom's coming this very evening," she added with an

audacious smile.

When she had gone, Emily poured Rachel another cup of tea; then taking

a chair directly in front of her, she looked at her shrewdly:

"Have you got any work?"

Rachel raised an anxious face. She had been seeking work for many

months.

"Can you do anything special?" Emily demanded.

Rachel was dubious. "Unless it was to trim hats," she ventured.

But Emily shook her head. "There's no chance in that line," she said

decidedly. "Did you ever paint any?"

"No, but I could do it. I've seen it done--that is, little things,

like roses and lighthouses."

Emily gave the other's hand two or three approving taps. "To-morrow

I'll bring you the materials from a place I know."

The next day she appeared with a supply of silk and paints and

patterns. Rachel's work was to paint garlands of roses on

candle-shades, but as she lacked even a rudimentary knowledge of colour

and drawing, for a time the work went ill. Even Emily, when she

compared Rachel's copy with the pattern, was less optimistic.

"It's a knack, though, they say," she encouraged her; "and one can

learn to do most anything if one goes about it firmly enough."

A week later, Emily, in a state of repressed excitement, summoned

Rachel to her room to see a mechanical toy she had devised. Rowing his

tiny boat over the waters of a tub was a wee figure dressed in sailor

costume.

In Emily's cheeks was a spot of crimson and in her eyes, which

ordinarily resembled little dark berries, was a peculiar brightness.

As she looked at Emily the colour even left Rachel's face with the

strength of her longing. When she returned to the garlands, the roses

blossomed under her fingers. "So much for work!" she thought, and

there arose in her a new and virile sensation of pride and joy.

CHAPTER III

SIMON HART TO THE RESCUE

As the summer advanced she refused to accept the dealer's verdict that

the demand for all sorts of hand-painted trifles languished in the

summer; painting was her one means of support, and with magnificent

courage, if with small practical sense, she continued to paint. But

when she carried her work to the dealer, though he admired it, he

refused to buy it, and she came home again and again as empty of pocket

as when she had started out.

She said nothing to Emily Short about her difficulties. Barring a

glimpse which she caught of her now and then she seldom saw the little

toy-maker, for during the hot weather Emily was unusually busy.

Emily was a famous nurse, and during the season when sickness was

rampant among the children of the slums, she put aside her toys and

hats and fought bravely for the little lives. She scrubbed faces and

cleaned floors and administered doses of medicine, and more than once

Rachel had met her at the edge of evening, bringing home an infant in

her arms. To see her depositing it where the breeze came in through

the open window, cooing to it, directing its wandering attention to the

sights and sounds of the church, was enough to bring tears to the eyes.

Fate, so prone to interfere with the plans of nature, wins at best but

a superficial victory when she attempts to extinguish the motherhood in

certain women. Deny them offspring she may, but dam up the love in

their hearts, she cannot. Fate makes spinsters, but God makes mothers.

And what is a mother but a being that looks with tenderness on all that

is weak, with delight on all that is young? To such a being, an infant

is ever a bud of promise to which she longs to be the sun. In the most

radiant and satisfying sense, Emily Short was a mother, and not a waif

in the quarter but knew it. Those who could walk, flocked after her on

their little bare feet, clinging to the folds of her dress with their

grimy fingers; and those who were too small to walk, looked at her with

fixed, unwinking eyes, apparently beholding nothing, while in reality

still seeing the something beyond this nothing, their state being one

of celestial preoccupation rather than one of dormant thought.

Rachel, aware of the burden Emily carried, hesitated to add to its

weight. If truth be told, as long as old David did not lack for

food,--and so far he had not gone hungry--as long as the rent was paid

for a week ahead, a subject more tyrannical than poverty engrossed her

thoughts. In some women the love that has once stirred them, never

becomes extinct; it is a flame that never completely dies, a fire of

which some sparks always linger among the dead ashes. At a breath from

that far-off source of all existence, a breath that quickens alike

grain and fruit and human hearts, this spark leaps to renewed life in

the sensitive, wounded and restless soul.

With the disingenuousness of a woman in love, with the timidity of a

little mouse, Rachel had established herself under the eaves of an

obscure garret in lower New York. For a time, following the change,

her heart had beat more tranquilly, for now the same sky covered her

that covered that egoistic remarkable being who had once played so

important a role in her life.

But gradually the sombreness of a storm was created within her; though

when she thought of the inventor she experienced little of the chagrin

of a woman whom a lover has deserted. Rather, what she felt was a

surprised resentment of soul. Emil St. Ives was ordained to understand

her, and behold he had forsaken her! With eyes as clear as a child's,

though shadowed by indefinable emotions, she often watched from the

window the pigeons circling on pointed wings over the house-tops, and

they seemed to her like a flurry of white letters tossed by a derisive

hand through the sky.

"Why had he never written her?"

At the thought her melancholy was crossed by anger; but at other

moments she remembered that it was she herself who had sent him away.

Oh, if he had only looked at her with his mind as well as his eyes!

But, enlivened continually by the astonished happy perception of the

inventor's mastery of the expedients he employs in his tests, joyful

with the joy of a creator, Emil had never really seen her. His love

for his mother carried him backward into the past, his love for his

work carried him forward into the future, until it actually seemed to

her he had no present, no to-day.

And she reflected that under one of those million roofs he was working

on some foolish instrument for which the world, as yet, did not

recognize its own need. The world, therefore, in all probability, was

leaving him alone, to live if he could, to starve if he must.

Meanwhile, the sound of his drilling, his hammering, above all, his

loud-voiced singing, was doubtless causing a commotion among the stars

where the important is recorded before it is heralded on this

commonplace earth.

Although she did not wish to remember the inventor, the thought of him

constantly returned and gradually she began to extract a kind of

pleasure from this involuntary analysis which she carried on for hours

together. Then roused by some sound from the street, with the languor

which results from power held in abeyance, she would resume work on the

shades.

One heavy morning toward the end of August, Rachel made the unpleasant

discovery that there was scarcely money enough in the house to cover

the needs of the day. To increase her dismay her grandfather, leaning

his head on his hand, refused his breakfast. Even the newspaper with

its sensational headlines failed to arouse him. She brought him a

glass of water, but with a weak gesture he motioned her away.

Thoroughly frightened, Rachel flung her arm about him and coaxed him to

return to his bed. Old David grew first red, then white, but gradually

the natural look returned to his face and he fell into a sound sleep.

Instructing Nora Gage to keep a close watch over him, Rachel started

for the shop where she had formerly disposed of her wares. She was

intoxicated with her own resolution. Though it was the third time

within a fortnight that she had made her appearance there, she spread

the shades on the counter with confident movements; then she looked up.

The clerk with his delicate salesmen's hand swept them toward her. "I

have told you that we have no call for these things," he said and

impatiently turned on his heel.

For some moments she seemed not to comprehend these words; presently

his voice, bland and seductive, reached her from another part of the

shop. Then she gathered up the shades, returned them to her handbag,

and walked slowly to the door. She made a movement to open it, but at

that instant she heard a step behind her.

When he lifted his hat, she recognized Simon Hart. He was looking at

her attentively with his weary, enigmatic eyes.

The salesman had followed him in a little rush.

"Perhaps you'd better leave the shades after all, Miss Beckett," he

began, "this gentleman--"

"I will give the young lady the order," the other said. And he held

the door open for Rachel.

Once in the street, she looked at her companion in surprise. She

thought she detected in his face covert satisfaction.

"I beg your pardon, but you called to see my father several weeks

ago--Miss Beckett? Thank you. The maid wasn't certain of the name.

Well, Miss Beckett," he continued in an embarrassed voice, enunciating

his words with distinctness, "it happens that I have just been

requested by a relative to get her some candle shades," and in a few

words he explained the commission, even producing from his pocket a

sample of the silk from which the shades were to be made. It was

essential that they should be finished in three days.

"And when you deliver them to Miss Burgdorf," he said, scribbling an

address on a card which he took from his pocket, "you might speak to

her in a general way of your work, if you care to do so. For my part,"

he concluded, "I'm very glad to know of someone who does this kind of

thing."

Before he left Rachel, he inquired where she and her grandfather were

living and the odd look of gratification deepened on his face.

"I needn't have told him, I suppose," she thought regretfully as she

walked home; "he may come there."

CHAPTER IV

THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS

A pompous-looking butler escorted Rachel through a vestibule, and

pointed her to a seat in the dining room. It was evident from his

manner that she should have applied at the basement entrance.

A group of workmen were busy setting up an immense table. They kept

pushing the sections together and drawing them apart. The polished

surfaces of the wood filled the room with reflected light. A maid who

stood by looked appealingly at the butler.

"It isn't the table that was ordered," she moaned. She glanced at a

clock which seemed, with its fluted columns and Gothic spires, a

sardonic spirit in that rich and disordered room. Its monotonous

tick-tock, tick-lock, scattered confusion, bewilderment, madness.

"Eleven!" she cried in tones of deepest tragedy, "and not a flower!"

Other servants entered bearing silver and glass. A footman came in

with a great palm, and bending, with shoulders on the strain, placed it

directly in the path of a hurrying maid. Some one dropped a goblet;

that showered into a million minute particles like shining tears.

Every movable object was shifted countless times and remained,

according to its nature, glittering, wavering, quivering for some

instants thereafter. A bronze Narcissus exhibited his grace at an

unusual angle. In such a time of rearrangement who has not observed

how art objects gain in beauty?

"Miss Burgdorf will see you now. Please step this way."

Rachel followed the servant up the staircase. The woman lifted long

strings of motley-hued beads strung in such a manner as to form a

semi-transparent curtain, passed through a sitting room and tapped on a

door. Julia Burgdorf was seated before her dressing-table in a robe of

flowing silk. She was having her face manipulated by a slim masseuse

in a long apron. The faces of the two women, as they rolled their eyes

inquiringly toward the door, were exceedingly feminine. Woman is ever

most natural when engaged in making herself artificial.

Julia Burgdorf extended her hand with an imperious gesture. "Let me

see the shades," she cried.

She was a powerful, dark-skinned, handsome woman, with her mind in her

eyes. Forty years of life had polished and embellished her until now

she resembled a jewel of many facets. Her throat suggested a singing

bird's, her shoulders were beautifully curved, her hands and arms

perfect. She scarcely glanced at Rachel but examined the shades

intently. Then once more she yielded her face to the masseuse.

"Thank goodness, child!" she sighed, "they're lovely! and I'd just

given you up. All these lights will be very hot, but they'll look like

a forest of tropical blossoms; that's what I wanted. Here, give me

that purse."

She counted out thirty dollars in bills, and handed them to Rachel and

then rang for the butler.

"Has the sherbet come?--Bring this young lady some. Here, sit down,"

she added, "you look tired."

Rachel seated herself on a brocaded divan, still holding in her fingers

a shade which had been slightly crushed and which she had repaired.

She held the shade like a flower, and her face above it was severe and

pale.

"Heavens, child! someone ought to catch your pose just as you sit now.

She doesn't need any of your cream, does she, Henley?"

The masseuse looked at Rachel and her face quaked into an hundred

little wrinkles. These played round her eyes like forked lightning,

then instantly and miraculously disappeared, leaving the skin like an

infant's.

"It wouldn't do her any harm, Miss Burgdorf," she said, bridling. "Our

cream is such a preservative. Sister and I think ladies can't begin

too early."

Her voice and manner suggested lotions; and this persistent artificial

youthfulness, superadded to the tiny creature's evident acumen, was not

without charm. In her long apron, tied behind with strings like a

pinafore, she would have passed very well for a child had it not been

for the lightning.

Julia Burgdorf rose and stretched her arms above her head, then let

them drop heavily while she stood for an instant in a listening

attitude. Though no word was brought to her of the perturbed state of

affairs below stairs, there was knowledge of it in the very air.

"The butler has broken the last cup," she declared with conviction,

"and the cook has gone off in a rage. I can see everything. Oh, what

a fool I was to leave the cool country and bother with that club of

cackling women at this season of the year! But charity before comfort.

Leave your address, please. My cousin, Mr. Hart," she went on, with a

droll screwing of the lips "wrote me about you. I may be able to get

you more orders." And with these words she passed on to her bath.

Now that the work which had engaged her for three days and a night was

finished, Rachel felt disinclined to move. She lingered over the

sherbet the butler had brought her and watched the masseuse putting

away the little delicate instruments of coquetry. All at once it

seemed to her that through the cool silence she heard the malicious

ticking of the great clock in the dining-room, and she recognized the

timepiece as a remorseless tyrant dominating not only the servants, but

the beautiful mistress of the house. Though instinctively conscious of

Julia Burgdorf's fear of age, Rachel was too young to experience any

real sympathy for her. Instead, what she did feel was a keen sense of

her own triumphant youth. A miniature of a young man stood on a

dressing-table. "He looks like Emil," she thought; and, to quiet her

agitation she fixed her attention on the masseuse, who, with a little

silver pencil, was marking the date on an illuminated calendar. Rachel

stared at this calendar, and the blood slowly left her cheek.

Nothing so conclusively proves the existence of an intelligent, if

somewhat perverse Fate, acting in the affairs of human beings, as these

potent stirrings of the memory, which she causes by the simplest means.

Does a woman require a bit of information? Incidentally Fate

enlightens her at the most opportune moment. Rachel attempted to avert

her eyes from the bit of cardboard, but the two names which were almost

lost in the design of the border and which certainly would have escaped

the casual glance of another, in a moment had evoked all the sweet and

irritating scenes of her past:

"_Benjamin Just & Richard Lawless, Art Lithographers, Lafayette

Street._"

Symbolizing all the events of her meagre romance, these names, with all

the accompanying address of which she had hitherto been ignorant, had

the effect of maturing in Rachel all that is most imperious in human

love. How little is required to move a woman's heart. The longing to

see Emil took possession of Rachel like a fever.

The one o'clock whistle sounded a last melancholy note, and she

inspected eagerly every figure that entered the factory. Why had she

assumed that Emil was still employed there? As the stream of men grew

less and presently ceased, the curve of her mouth became scornful.

"How idiotic!" she whispered. She was turning away when a young girl

emerged from a side door over which appeared the word "_Office_." She

came out impetuously. The fact that she was weeping arrested Rachel's

attention. Her slight frame shook with sobs. She took a few steps,

then paused to extract a handkerchief from a bag she wore at her belt.

She pulled out the handkerchief and a letter fell from the reticule,

but in the excess of her grief she went on without perceiving her loss.

Rachel crossed the street and as she picked up the letter, she

involuntarily noticed its superscription. Written carelessly on the

blue envelope was the name "Mrs. E. A. St. Ives." She

faltered--staring at it. She stood still and something seemed to

strike her in the breast. Yet she was conscious that surprise had no

part in her feeling. After a few seconds, she forced herself to walk

on. At the next corner she overtook the girl.

"Is this yours?" she asked. And her voice sounded strange in her ears.

The girl wheeled, showing a face disfigured with tears. "Oh, yes," she

said, "it's mine! Did I drop it?"

Rachel continued to look at her without stirring. She passed her hand

once or twice across her forehead. "You are Mrs. Emil St. Ives?"

"Why yes, I'm Mrs. St. Ives." The other was now gazing at her with

curiosity.

So this was the girl who had helped Emil in the past, who helped him

now,--the girl he preferred to her. Disdainful, she swept round. As

she moved, she lifted her shoulders as if she would rid herself of

something, but the action spoke forlornness.

"Why do you ask?" questioned the other, pursuing.

Rachel paused. "Nothing made me ask," she said, "only the name was

familiar."

She was walking on when the girl caught her arm.

"Perhaps you know my husband?" she persisted. "Do you?"

Once more Rachel stood still. "Yes I know him--slightly."

"I knew you did," and a note of incipient jealousy sounded in the

other's voice. "When did you know him?" she asked, and she fixed sharp

eyes on Rachel's face.

"It was last summer in Maine," Rachel answered. "I took him out a few

times in a boat to make some experiments. When I saw the name I

recognized it." Her indifference, the sudden cold and remote

expression of her eye, which was like a thrust of the arm, deceived her

questioner.

"Oh, I see," she said, meekly. "Was it the _depth indicator_! Oh I

know it was," and at the mention of this instrument, she returned to

her original grievance. "It's that _depth indicator_ that's been at

the bottom of all our troubles," she explained; "if it hadn't been for

that, Alexander would have finished the lithographing press and then

everything would have come out different. But now Father--Oh, I can

talk to you, can't I?" she interpolated. "I must talk to someone.

I've been treated so--you don't know!" and she began to sob again in a

helpless, childish fashion, with the unrestrained grief of a nature,

hysterical, feverish.

But one thought burned in Rachel: Emil's marriage. Her pain, however,

was not new; she felt that she had lived through it before, for it is a

characteristic of suffering that it never comes as a novel experience

and herein it differs from joy. The disconnected explanations of her

companion, mingled with the repeated request to be allowed to confide

in her, gradually roused Rachel. Her eyes travelled over Annie. She

noticed the once tasteful dress, which was now badly worn, the little

pear-shaped face with its peaked nose and babyish eyes.

She was about to reply haughtily, then, moved by Annie's beseeching

look, altered her intention.

"Yes, you can tell me if you want to," she answered softly and dully.

Involuntarily the two girls turned their steps in the direction of a

square, a triangular breathing place in this densely populated section.

They seated themselves on one of the benches and Annie poured out her

story. But her words scarcely penetrated Rachel's brain. She stared

at some clothing drying on a fire-escape, and it struck her that the

antics of the clothing fastened to a line were no more grotesque and

absurd than the antics of human creatures fastened to life. Inwardly

she rocked on the wide sea of misery.

The dramatic features of her situation were not lost on Emil's wife.

As she described her life in her parent's home, contrasting it with her

present mode of existence, it was clear that Annie viewed herself in a

romantic light. Never the less her misery was real, and more than once

she had recourse to her small damp handkerchief.

"When once we were married I felt sure Father would forgive us," she

concluded, "but he says I shall never, never come home until I leave

Alexander. Father's terrible when he's angry. All the same, this

isn't the first time I've been to him," she explained. "At first he

wouldn't see me, and when he did, he wouldn't listen to a word. He

said Alexander was utterly irresponsible and the lithographing press

and the rest of it had been as good as made over on an entirely

different principle. But finally when I teased and teased he said if

Alexander wanted to accept the position of expert examiner with the

firm, they'd take him back at a salary. Not a very big salary, but

still something regular. And I was so pleased," she added, "I felt

there was a chance for him if he worked hard and didn't make trouble; I

thought he'd soon rise to something better. But what do you think?

Alexander refused! He roared like a madman when I told him. He said

he wanted to do independent work, and never again would he sell his

brain, his soul, his very life-blood to my father. And I went to the

factory this afternoon to tell Father, and though I toned down

Alexander's words and explained just how he felt as tactfully as I

could, Father not only refused to make him another offer, but he threw

open the door and pointed for me to go." And at the memory of the

indignity, she covered her face with her hands. "Oh, whatever is going

to become of us?" she wailed.

Rachel said nothing, and this continued silence quieted the other.

Presently with an air of finality she lifted her head.

Opening her bag she returned the handkerchief to its depths.

"But I promised to stand by Alexander and I'm going to," she said in a

low voice. "Somehow, he makes you feel that you want to stand by him."

Still Rachel said nothing.

"I must go now," Annie cried, tipping her face back, "see, it's going

to storm, and I'm so afraid of lightning."

And indeed black, threatening clouds were coming up rapidly.

"I'd ask you to come and see us," she added as they fled from the

square, "only the place is so horrid. You see, Alexander not only

works there, but we live there, too," she continued, while they stood

waiting for a car with the wind whipping their dresses about them.

"Alexander has a workshop, that's all he cares for, and I have a room

about three feet square; and then he has a horrid deaf and dumb

creature who helps him. Oh, if I'd known he was going to have _him_

live with us!" and her voice broke. "You've been so good to let me go

on in this way," she cried, as the car stopped. "I'll tell my husband

I met you. What name shall I say?"

But Rachel did not answer. She merely nodded as the other, in a

tremour of fright, stepped on the car.

"You'll get caught in the rain!" Annie called after her.

Rachel smiled grimly.

The rain descended at first thin and fine as if poured through a sieve;

then it increased in volume till the gutters ran yellow torrents, till

the sordid brick buildings looked like drenched, warty frogs of a giant

growth, till the slender trees in the squares fairly bent to the

ground. But Rachel was caught in the vortex of a storm even wilder.

It was two hours later when she slowly climbed the steps of the

tenement house. Emily Short's voice reached her from an upper landing:

"There, don't you go looking him up again, will you, Betty? There

ain't a man in the world worth running after."

Rachel halted and a fierce denunciatory light flamed in her eyes. Then

she pulled herself together.

When she opened the door of the outer room Simon Hart rose to greet

her. He felt that he had taken her by surprise and, in embarrassment,

smoothed his hair.

"It's going to clear," he said and glanced toward the window which let

into the tiny room the slowly increasing light.

Rachel swept a look in the same direction. "Yes," she repeated,

"it's--clearing."

In the sky, visible beyond the clutter of wet roofs, appeared a strange

arrangement of gold bars, and above the bars huddled the thunder clouds

like a herd of newly-tamed animals.

CHAPTER V

SHOWING THAT SACRIFICES ARE NOT ALWAYS APPRECIATED

To cast a glance backward,--it was with a mixture of surprise, chagrin

and growing indignation, that Emil St. Ives took his way from the Maine

coast to tumultuous, brain-inspiring New York. In the hotel at Old

Harbour he lingered over his packing, confident until the last moment,

that some word would arrive from Rachel. She surely would not allow

him to go without seeking to effect a reconciliation. No word came

and, once seated in the train, he stared out at the landscape with

sullen fierceness. But there, in scraggy rocks, stumps of trees,

water, meadows, salt marshes, wind with a tang in it, gold beams poured

from rifted clouds, mist, storm, rolling fog--there was Rachel, the

girl herself. She was dancing, scudding on ahead of the train, wrapped

in a veil. Now he saw the gleam of her eyes; now her serious mouth!

now the curve of a wrist; now a fleeing ankle! Remaining behind, she

yet went with him! Deuce take it, he felt her breath on his face!

He was conscious of an immense weight of sadness in his breast, but it

lessened neither his pique nor his astonishment. Full of mastership,

his ideas of womankind were based chiefly on the devotion accorded him

by his mother, by Annie Lawless, and, until then, by Rachel herself.

Such whole-souled devotion he accepted as his rightful due. Therefore

Rachel's downright and uncompromising attitude astounded him. Her

anger, when she learned that another young lady was interested in his

affairs, was justified, he admitted. He had not been open with her.

What he could not overlook, however, was her allusion to his mother's

disappointment if his plans with the lithographers failed to

materialize. If she had cared for him, she would have spared him that

barbed thrust which even in memory caused his nerves to tingle. If she

had cared for him she would have prevented his going. But she had

allowed him to go without a hope of ever seeing him again.

He began to laugh bitterly; presently lifting his long frame out of the

car seat, he went for a drink of water. He stood with the cup in his

hand, forgetting to drink. He could not endure that a woman should

scorn and repudiate him. The quarrel with Rachel shook him all the

more violently, as, with his habits of mind, he was unaccustomed to

such tempests. He returned to his seat and fixed his eyes once more on

the flying landscape.

She had shone upon him like sunlight, and passion had awakened--passion

and interest and something besides. She had stormed at him like a

tempest and finally had mystified him with a fog, best proof of all

that hers was the womanhood for his manhood. But did he understand?

The pebble rolling down a hill has as much comprehension of the force

that summons it--indeed it has more, for the pebble obeys the force and

Emil St. Ives did not obey. Instead he set himself squarely about and

took his way back to New York with a smouldering eye; but a fierce,

surprised bird whose pinions had been clipped might have worn just such

a look, and he kept ruffling the feathers of his vanity, for the wings

of his egotism drooped.

Presently he produced paper and pencil, but still boiling, it was

sometime before he could control his thoughts. Finally, he began to

sketch roughly a plan for an instrument; the next day his humiliation

had so far abated as to permit of his working steadily on the scheme;

and when he reached New York his complacency was practically restored.

On alighting from the train he found awaiting him a little eager,

flushing, paling being in the shape of a woman.

When Emil saw Annie Lawless peering at him from the midst of the crowd

on the platform, a certain new sensation, strong, sweet, but somehow

malign, sprang to life within him. At least Annie was not indifferent

to him. His chagrin disappeared and a desperate hardihood took its

place. It is soothing, as most people will agree, when a golden apple

has been denied us, to have offered for our acceptance a little rosy

plum. Is it amazing then, that Emil stood ready hand and mouth for the

plum, all the more as he reckoned its flavour, on the whole, rather

pleasant? With his worn suit-case in one hand and his precious

_depth-indicator_ in the other, he swung down the platform, and Annie,

followed by the ungainly figure of Ding Dong, advanced to meet him.

Then Emil set down the suit-case and the _depth-indicator_ and received

Annie's timid anxious glance in his own dark orbs. In it plunged, that

little maiden look, and the earth for Annie rocked, though for Emil it

merely oscillated very slightly,--no more than when one has taken a sip

of wine, piquant and a little heady.

Ding Dong gathered up the traps and fell submissively behind the young

couple, and Annie pressed against Emil and clung to him. What more

natural than that, finding himself unencumbered, he should bend down

and encircle her little figure with his arm? A rosy plum, a sip of

wine, a little bit of a woman with no wits at all and her heart in her

face, such was Annie.

As for that puzzling mid-region between mind and heart, which was the

region affected in Emil, one might as well attempt to mark out paths in

a wilderness as to set up guideposts there. Every thought is tinged

with feeling, every feeling is sullied with thought, and the ways are

hopelessly mixed. But it is a region which stands in no need of

description, for in the range of emotional experience, few people ken

anything beyond this vast temperate zone. And yet they declare, at the

last, that they have lived! Pathetic misapprehension! Nothing is more

uncommon, more unspeakably rare, than a life actually lived. Only a

person who is at once an intrepid explorer and an inexhaustible artist,

appreciating ever the value of extremes and of contrasts, in short a

genius on every side, is capable of life.

Though Emil had a measure of this capacity, he was hopelessly adrift in

a maze of stupidity; for men, save at exceptional moments, are such a

very small part of themselves. So he encircled Annie with his arm and,

bringing his face close to hers, kissed her. And Annie did not utter a

reproach. She forgot the words that would have formed it. She forgot

every word in her vocabulary, except one little word that all but

escaped from the hot panting region of her heart.

But she had formed a plan which she remembered. Dragging Emil into the

waiting room, she indicated two chairs in a quiet corner. When they

were seated, she put one little gloved hand for a moment over his and

pressed it down hard in order to hold his attention, though this

manoeuvre was not in the least necessary, for she was far from

unpleasing to look upon. The colour kept chasing the white on her

cheek, for she was frightened by what she had to say and at a loss how

to say it; the sweet peas, pinned in a bunch on the breast of her

jacket, threatened to fly away like a bevy of butterflies with her

tumultuous breathing, and a fascinating little pulse fluttered in her

neck just above the lace of her collar, and Emil, watching it, knew

that it indicated the wild movements of her heart.

What wonder that he almost recovered his wonted spirits in the air of

adoration that breathed from these two humble people? For Ding Dong,

with his ears like huge excrescences and his legs that seemed to bend

under the weight of his squat body so that he resembled nothing so much

as a grotesque from a cathedral niche,--Ding Dong hung on his look with

exactly as much attention as Annie. Despite the feeling of sadness

that lurked far down in the depths of his being, Emil perceived afresh

that it was a very good sort of world and that New York was a

marvellous city. And his egotism began to spread its wings and his

eyes to flash good humouredly. Being now well beyond the larva stage,

admiration was necessary to him,--it was an air without which he was

unable to exist.

"But how did you know that I would come on this train?" he asked

gently; and, clasping his hands about his knees, he stared at Annie

with a peculiar concentrated interest.

She looked up at him with a faint suggestion of reproach. "I didn't

know; though I was prepared to wait until you did come," she said.

"The fact is, Alexander," she continued, "what Father has done is

shameful. It isn't right, and as he's my father, it's only just--well,

I hope you won't take it wrong--but I have a little money which was

left me by an aunt to do with just as I choose. I've got it all here,

see, in this bag," and she opened the drawstrings. "It isn't much,

only a thousand dollars, but I thought perhaps--perhaps you would take

it until you could invent something."

To save his life Emil could not prevent the joy that flashed in his

eyes. To be free to invent, even for a brief space! It was an

unexpected glimpse straight into Paradise. He peeped in--just one

peep; then greatly to his credit, considering how little of an ordinary

man he was and how much of a genius,--who resembles a bird of heaven in

his freedom from a sense of obligations,--he shut the door on the

Paradise forcibly.

He bent forward and took both of Annie's hands in his. Slowly, very

slowly, he shook his head.

"Oh, please!" she supplicated, and her face puckered. As she looked

straight into his eyes with her own, he saw them suffuse with tears.

The sight of these tears perturbed him so that he was no longer master

of himself.

"But see here, I can't!" he said, and the blood darkened his cheek, "I

can't take money from you; you're mad!"

"Oh, if that's the way you consider me--just like a stranger!" And

Annie turned sharply aside and buried her face in a scrap of a

handkerchief from which ascended an odour of subtle feminine appeal.

In their excitement both had risen and Emil spread his massive bulk to

screen her distress from the few people who were seated in the

waiting-room. Never had he been driven into such a net by his own

emotions.

"See here," he cried, bending over her and breathing the words into her

ear, "I consider you my only friend"; and his ardour was augmented by

his remembrance of Rachel.

This was devotion, this!

"Friend?" she repeated, lifting her head and gazing at him through her

tears. "I'm more than that. There isn't anything I wouldn't do for

you, and I thought--I thought--"

For an instant Emil saw her judicially. "So that's it?" he reflected,

but the next instant the male in him was completely glamoured.

For the last time some positive seduction in Annie overcame him. Love

will polish even a plain woman to something approaching brilliancy, and

Annie was by no means plain. Her hair gave out a delicate odour; the

pupils of her eyes, usually small, spilled their black over the blue of

the irises; her little mouth emitted a whole troop of sighs; the stuff

of her waist crackled, as if, though it fitted her body, it compressed

her heart. In truth, that which was the heart in her, the soul in her,

was striving mightily to come to him, and being a man he did not refuse

it.

"Do--do you mean that you would marry me?" he hazarded unsteadily,

"without prospects--nothing? You can see for yourself, everything I

put my hand to turns out wrong," he added argumentatively.

She nodded. A look of ecstasy overspread her face.

What he experienced chiefly was a profound astonishment.

He moved back a step in order to study her. That she felt in this way

toward him was no news, but that she was ready to take the decisive

step now, when his whole outlook was altered.... In his gaze there

grew a peculiar gentleness and simplicity.

"Yes, but what about your father, what will he say?" he inquired,

dallying dreamily with the consideration.

"Father, oh, he'll bluster at first, but he'll forgive us. I know him.

Besides, hasn't he stolen your invention?"

"So it's only fair I should steal his daughter; is that it?" This

question, like the other, was an idle playing with the subject, as

though, for the moment, his will went in leash to hers.

Annie lifted her face with a laugh which stirred him strangely. Her

eyes rested questioningly upon him and he was conscious of an ambiguous

emotion of pleasure and confusion. He had a desire to say tender words

to her, to touch her hair; none the less he sighed heavily.

And Annie all at once took his attitude for granted. Timid, yet with

that potency of appeal which belongs often to the weakest women, she

clasped his hand, glancing up at him in such a way that he felt all

resistance expiring within him.

"That poor fellow over there," she went on happily after a moment,

during which she pressed his fingers once or twice, "every time I'd go

to the factory, he'd make the strangest signs, and at first I couldn't

understand what he wanted. But after a little, I made out that he was

asking about you. And when Father got in that new man to work on your

machine, Ding Dong, as they call him, just went wild and raged. He

tried to stand guard over the machine and he locked the door of your

shop. But finally they got in and he acted so, they had to get rid of

him."

Emil, who had been admiring the vivacity of her face, caught only the

last words of this speech.

"Ding Dong you say! Yes, a fine fellow," he agreed with a sparkling

smile.

"Well, between us we've got everything planned," Annie continued.

"We've found a little apartment--"

He started.

"Where you can work and invent," she added in a voice scarcely above a

whisper.

"Invent," he murmured, for she sidled and slunk closer to him so that

with difficulty he resisted an impulse to seize her to his breast.

Explain it who can: in one short hour all the judgments of this man

were reversed. Though he was influenced by selfish motives, he did not

recognize them. Annie was his friend, the one most necessary to him

and to whom he was necessary. It was really downright amazing how much

she cared for him, and seeing her through a mist of gratitude which he

mistook for love, he compared her to the cold Rachel to the latter's

disadvantage. In love consciously with neither the one nor the other

of these two women and only obscurely aware that his feeling for Rachel

was capable of assuming the character of a dominating passion, he was

really concerned in but one object, his work. He therefore yielded

himself readily to gratified vanity, egotism, enthralled senses, those

potent agents for the smothering of the masculine will.

They were on their way to the office of the Mayor when abruptly Emil

ordered the driver of the cab to halt, while he questioned Annie

anxiously. Did she think it wise--what they were doing? Had she

sufficiently considered?

For answer she put her hands on his shoulders and drew his head to her

breast so vehemently that he had difficulty in breathing.

After that he spoke no more until their destination was reached, but

stared out intently at the people, who passed in carriages and on foot,

with a smile in which there was an uneasy melancholy.

A week later any scales he might have had over his eyes had vanished.

Memories of Rachel obtruded themselves and he turned from them with

stifled sighs. He was ill at ease and his conscience troubled him. He

was penitent before Annie and redoubled his caresses. But she was not

essential to him, and as time went on he buried himself in his work.

In the choice of the apartment the young girl betrayed the fundamental

practicality of her nature. The rooms were inexpensive and at the same

time attractive and homelike; but at the end of a month, Emil

discovered a sky-lighted loft in the lower part of the city into which

he wished to move. The place would be a more convenient one for his

work. Thither Ding Dong, in the capacity of assistant to the inventor,

accompanied the pair. With him he brought the monkey Lulu.

Largely because of his affection for her, though partly because of his

hatred of his former employers on whom he thought absurdly to revenge

himself, Ding Dong had stolen the little creature from the factory. He

made her a cage, which she seldom occupied, her favourite station being

the sill of the window where Emil had his work-bench. There she

crouched among the tools with her little, worried, half-human face

turned to the inventor, and now and then she reached out a black hand

and laid it questioningly on his sleeve. Seeing his pet thus safely

cared for, Ding Dong was free to spend himself in the service of his

new master. He ran errands, bustled about in a flurry of often useless

activity, and even fitted up the tiny room set apart for Annie. At

first the young wife agreed to everything.

Crushed by a stormy interview with her father in which he had forbidden

her to cross his threshold, in the early days of her marriage Annie

accepted the privations of her new mode of life without a word. She

thought to endear herself to her husband. But Emil, far from

sympathizing with her position, was honestly unconscious of it.

Carried away by the interest of his work, he forgot her. When made

aware of her, bitterness filled his soul. He felt himself guilty

toward her. Never the less, her tears, her letters to her mother,

which he was forced to read and approve, her constant efforts on his

behalf with her father, above all, her insistence that he go back and

accept the situation of expert examiner, which was finally grudgingly

offered him,--all this irked him in the extreme.

"Go back there--after the way he's treated me?" he cried,--"you ask it?"

"I thought--I thought--" murmured Annie, "we are very miserable."

"Well?" His significant tone seemed to imply, "Who's to blame?"

He now perceived clearly that she hampered him, that he could have got

on very much better without her.

"You are not interested in my work," he cried, blaming her; "a woman is

always like that. No detachment with them is possible. I ought to

have understood this."

Then Annie broke down, and contrition overcame him. He took her in his

arms where she cuddled like a little kitten.

"I'm no one for you," he whispered, while a fierce sigh rent him.

But convinced that he suffered by the arrangement more than she did, he

cherished a grudge against her because she interfered with him.

Fearing to disquiet his mother, he allowed several months to pass

before he wrote to her of his marriage. Viewing it coldly, he felt

much cause for shame in the situation.

Quarrels were constant, and as the sight of Annie disquieted him, he

shut himself off from her more and more. He worked, slept and ate in

his shop, and Annie inhabited her lonely little room, weeping and

staring out over the house-tops in acute disgust. As Emil had said,

devotion to an abstract ideal was impossible to her and she was jealous

now of his work as of a rival, so that they had no topic about which

they could talk when together. Everything furnished a subject for

dispute, even Ding Dong and his pet. Ding Dong disgusted her by his

outlandish appearance, and the monkey, she declared, made her nervous.

The day following her meeting with Rachel, Annie spoke of the encounter.

"I met someone you know yesterday," she said; "a girl from Maine."

Wrinkling up his brow, Emil paused in his work.

Something in his expression excited and angered his wife.

"Well," she cried sharply, "do you remember her? What's her name?"

But Emil, despite his desire to know more, resumed his work without

answering, and the eyes he cast down held the look of a child that

dimly perceives in its suffering the result of its own act.

CHAPTER VI

DESPAIR AND DESOLATION

As she stood in the attic room with its sloping roof and dormer

windows, her little dark head almost touched the ceiling. Old David

surveyed her with pride; then cast a glance at Simon Hart. The driving

rain had modelled the stuff of her dress to her arms and shoulders in

winding folds. As she lifted her hands to remove her hat, from which

drooped the straight lines of a veil, she resembled a Tanagra figurine.

But there was no antique serenity in her expression.

Convinced that she was disconcerted by his presence, Simon Hart began

to explain that he had brought her another order for candle shades.

Then, as her lack of sophistication grew upon him, he ended by inviting

her and her grandfather to dine with him.

But Rachel looked at him with vague, unseeing eyes, until David nudged

her elbow.

"We'll like to go very much, won't we, Rachel?" he said in a voice

which quavered with delight.

Then she understood and forced a smile to her lips.

"But don't ye forgit to say something to Miss Short, will ye?" the old

man reminded her. "You see," he added, turning to the visitor, "Miss

Short expected to go somewhere with us to-night for a little

celebration, because of that order--the first one you got, Rachel--and

it's most kind of you, too, to take such an interest."

The other waved these last words aside. "Now about this celebration,"

he said, "what do you say to asking Miss Short to go with us?"

Again Rachel forced herself to express pleasure.

When Simon Hart went out to call a carriage, she entered the inner room.

After ridding herself of her wet dress, she sat down before the cracked

looking-glass and began arranging her hair. But almost immediately she

folded her arms on the bureau, bowed her head upon them and fell to

weeping. In the depths of her soul she felt that nothing could alter

her despair. Henceforth the knowledge of Emil's marriage would lodge

there like a rock heaved into the midst of a stream, and the current of

her life would eddy around it. The approach of Nora Gage caused her to

lift her face and continue coiling her hair.

Simon Hart was not a worldly man. He confined himself closely to the

supervision of his business--the manufacture and sale of jewellery. At

night he returned to his austere house in Washington Square. Of a

painfully reticent disposition, he made few friends, his fastidious and

slightly ironical manner effectually cutting him off from companionship.

The only beings who played any sustained part in his life were the

gaunt mysterious female who served his meals and arranged his

drawing-room as she chose, his old father who moved optical instruments

over the floor of the attic; and, at the shop, Victor Mudge, who

designed special settings for gems. For Victor Mudge, Simon

entertained a particular regard, though he felt sensitively that the

goldsmith disapproved of him. The truth was, these two friendless

men,--the one living in his well-nigh empty house, the other in his

hall bedroom,--criticized each the other's lonely condition.

The diversion created in the jeweller's life by the persons just named

was no more than the gnawing of a bevy of mice in an otherwise quiet

cellar. Painfully aware of this, he attempted to enrich his existence

by extending the scope of his intellectual pursuits. He took up the

study of social economics and pursued it diligently. In the same way,

during the season, he forced himself to attend the opera with

conscientious regularity, although he had no real musical taste and

much that he saw and heard was in reality distasteful to him. He felt

a constant need to check in himself a tendency to indulge feelings that

were deeper than those apparently experienced by other men.

Only once had a person penetrated his reserve. Several years before he

had made the acquaintance of a scholarly lady who brought to his shop

for suitable setting an Egyptian scarab. In the course of filling this

simple order Simon had called upon her several times. Subsequent

developments, however, had revealed the fact that the scholarly lady

had a husband, and the acquaintance had languished; though for some

time after the incident he had kept her photograph on his pianola where

he had been in the habit of studying it while he had pedalled evenly.

This photograph had fallen behind a stationary bookcase, and at present

the one brightness in his life was the gleam of the gold and the jewels

in his shop.

Now he stood helpless at the corner of the street. Trusting to her

unique charm to atone for any discrepancy in her dress, he would have

risked Rachel's appearance in one of the more fashionable restaurants.

But the others? He shook his head.

More keenly sensitive to observation than a man of wider social

experience, he shrank from the attention the group would be likely to

attract. Presently he came to a decision. He would take his guests to

a restaurant in the vicinity of his house, where he made a practice of

dining when the weather was particularly oppressive.

As they quitted the tenement rooms, Nora Gage padded softly out on the

landing in her heelless slippers. Her enormous bust undulated more

than usual and her hands at her waist disappeared beneath overhanging

folds of fat. "Well, I hope you'll have something good to eat," she

remarked meaningly. Rachel, her head high, ignored these words; but

old David nodded with smiles and gestures toward his pocket.

Like a child he expressed his delight openly. His white locks moved in

the air, fine as cobwebs, and his face was wreathed in continual smiles

which prolonged the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and deepened

the lines about his mouth to quivering crescents of laughter defining

the rosy hillocks of his cheeks. With a shaking finger he pointed out

the sights in the streets to Emily, who nodded decorously the plumes of

her elaborately-trimmed hat. The hat was destined for one of Mrs.

Stedenthal's customers, but Emily had borrowed it for the evening. The

very novelty of the situation diverted Rachel; she became aware of a

dual consciousness--a self that suffered and a self that was vaguely

amused.

In the restaurant the waiter uncorked a bottle of champagne and Simon

begged the young girl to taste it. She lifted it to her lips, then

played with the glass.

Simon watched the slim thumb and finger that encircled the fragile stem

of crystal. With unostentatious movements he repeatedly filled his own

glass. Occasionally he ventured to lift a glance to Rachel's face.

She wore a skirt of dark silk, and a little flowered scarf over a waist

of sheer muslin. The brim of her drooping hat, whenever she leaned

forward, cast its shadow over her shoulders and her scarcely-indicated

breast. When she straightened up, however, it was as if a cloud lifted

and revealed the glow of her cheeks, the line of her lips, the depths

of her eyes where some gloomy thought constantly hovered; for, strive

as she would, summoning to her aid all her furious pride, she could not

conceal the misery and despair that were consuming her heart. From her

round wrists her sleeves fell back in ample folds and the pale yellow

of her scarf repeated the colour of the champagne.

As the dinner progressed Simon refrained more and more from looking at

her. He did not ask himself what was troubling this young girl, he did

not wish to know; perhaps he shrank from anything so absolutely

youthful as her despair. On the other hand, the costume she wore, in

that it was probably of her own fashioning, filled him with a kind of

tenderness. Many trifling peculiarities of people, scarcely noticeable

movements, awakened in him this feeling. It was a kind of pitifulness

in his nature, though he had rarely been moved to the same degree by so

slight a detail.

Life takes on to most men, who by middle age have attained any measure

of success, the character of a long meal of many courses. But to Simon

Hart it seemed like the meal which the traveller takes in a gloomy way

station. Now Rachel appealed to him like the unexpected nuts of a

dessert, the unlooked for "riddle in ribbons," for he was keen enough

to suspect the riddle hidden in this little smooth-skinned girl.

The thoughts engendered in Emily Short, as she quietly observed the

pair, were as foreign to her mind as the food was to her palate. In

the pauses between the courses she wove a shining romance about Rachel

and her companion and finally installed them in a castle similar in

architecture to that which decorated the china of the service. Old

David, remembering Nora, occupied the moments while the waiter's back

was turned, in secreting various tidbits in the pocket of his coat. So

slyly did he do this that no one observed his manoeuvres, and he tucked

away crackers, olives and finally a portion of ice-cream which was

served in a little box.

Meanwhile the waiters, bearing steaming viands, hurried to and fro.

They lifted silver dish covers, which reflected the light, and revealed

the red claws of lobsters surrounded by green garnishings, and fowls

steaming in gravy. Leaning between the shoulders of the diners, they

poured out water and wine; and every moment, as they skilfully avoided

trampling the dresses of the ladies, which flowed in rippling folds

around their chairs, or cleared with heavy platters balanced on their

hands the black shoulders of the men,--they cried, "Your pardon,

madam!--In just a moment, sir!" and nothing could equal their dexterity

or the softness of their cat-like tread. Through the restaurant

swelled the penetrating, complicated music of the orchestra. At one

moment a shower of gay notes seemed to be falling, falling everywhere,

and the people broke in upon it with the loud clapping of hands. At

another moment waves of melody, unnoticed, mounted insidiously like a

tide and finally bore with them, like spume and tangled seaweed,

something of the emotion from each overcharged heart.

Turning her head aside, Rachel felt on her cheek the cool freshness of

the night which entered over some plants in a window-box. For moments

together as she listened, it seemed to her that her misery was

expressed poignantly by the music. Then as the _motif_ altered,

insensibly her mood changed. She thought of André from whom she had

received a letter the week before. Captain Daniels, whose animosity

toward the lad increased with the years, in a fit of drunken temper had

broken André's fiddle. She resolved, as soon as she could, to send him

another. Then Zarah Patch sent word that Buttercup, the cow he had

purchased from David, mistaking the moaning of the fog bell for the

crying of her calf, had floundered into the bay and been drowned.

"Poor Buttercup!" she thought; then--"Poor André!" And, across the

miles of space that separated them, she seemed to hear again the

breathless words in which the boy had told her of his love.

The orchestra was now executing a fantasy composed entirely of runs

with the repetition of one bass note, and suddenly, without warning,

her agony was once more upon her. Once more, distraught, breathless,

she held that horrible envelope in her hand;--she read its

superscription. The men in the orchestra, puffing at their horns,

fingering their flutes, drawing their fiddle bows, were executing that

final wild movement, not on their instruments, but on her heart.

She looked up and encountered Simon Hart's eyes. Instantly averting

his gaze, he proposed that they leave the restaurant; when they were

outside, he suggested that they walk through the square which perfumed

the air with the odour of its great trees. But no sooner had they

entered the square, than old David evinced a distaste for locomotion.

"I don't feel jest like myself somehow," he confided in a whisper to

Emily Short. "Let's jest sit down here a minute." And the little

toy-maker, who had her own reasons for wishing to leave the couple to

themselves, readily complied.

Simon and Rachel walked on. At last, they also seated themselves on

one of the benches. It was after ten o'clock and the square was

deserted. The moon, in its first quarter, caused Washington arch to

throw a black shadow athwart the path; and now and again the swaying

branches of the trees brought out traceries of leaves on Rachel's white

shoulders and on her sleeves. With his arms folded across his knees so

that his head was on a level with hers, Simon began telling her about a

recently published history of jewels that partly covered the field of a

work he had long been engaged upon. As he spoke she noticed that since

dinner his eyes had lost something of then weary look and that his

nervousness had abated. He spoke with the masculine deliberation which

women ordinarily find so irritating, but which, owing to the state of

her nerves, calmed Rachel.

"However, my book," he explained, "deals almost exclusively with the

legends connected with jewels. My aim is first and foremost, to

restore to them their lost poetical significance. Plato, for instance,

and the Egyptians, for that matter, believed that they were veritable

beings produced by a sort of fermentation which was the result of a

vivifying spirit descending from the stars. Look up there," he

exclaimed, pointing to the sky, "then look at this, and tell me if it

doesn't resemble star-gold condensed into a transparent mass;" and from

his finger he drew a ring and placed it in her palm.

She was more and more comforted. As he enlarged on the theme, which

was evidently a favourite one with him, she watched the gyrations of

the fountain. Outlined to her vision, she beheld a life which seemed

to her infinitely more tranquil than her own.

On their return to the Street of Masts, Emily assisted old David up the

stairs and Rachel remained in the doorway waiting for Simon Hart to

finish an interminable sentence. Weighty, carefully worded, laborious,

his peroration, for the most part, fell on deaf ears. Never the less

she was conscious of an involuntary attraction to him. When at last he

extended his hand, she felt that he was stirred by some emotion he

wished to conceal.

"Now that we have celebrated our newly-formed friendship," he said with

an attempt at gallantry, "I shall expect you to call upon me should any

matter come up in which I can serve you. Will you promise?"

The kindness was unexpected, her state forlorn. Her lips worked

sensitively. "Yes," she said.

He lifted her hand to his lips; at once something penetrating and

tender enveloped them.

At that moment the voice of Emily Short reached them from the upper

landing. "Miss Beckett--Rachel!" she called, "come--come right up

here! Your grandfather--something's wrong!"

In the room under the roof the flaring gas showed old David half

sitting, half lying upon the couch.

Rachel darted to him. "Grandfather--what is it?" she shrieked; and

winding her arms about him, she tried to centre his wild and wandering

glances on herself.

But moaning incessantly, incoherently, he pushed her away with one hand

while clutching her tightly with the other. Constantly his eyes

questioned her--only to reject all help that she or any other could

give him.

To her tortured sense it seemed an eternity before those half-human

cries of his were silenced. In reality scarcely ten minutes elapsed

before Simon Hart returned with a doctor.

Without hesitation the physician pronounced old David's attack a

paralytic shock affecting both the lower limbs, though the disease, he

said, might shift at anytime.

When they removed the old man's clothing, from the pocket of his coat

rolled a few nuts and a little box of half-melted ice-cream.

CHAPTER VII

STOP--LOOK--LISTEN

Old David was going to die. The sunshine knew it and danced over him

caressingly, touching his hands, his face, his hair each day, as if for

the last time. It spilled pretty pools of gold on the floor and

painted the walls with golden patches. And the plants at the window

ledge knew it, two primroses and a pot of yellow jonquils, and for that

reason they bloomed constantly, perfuming the air with a delicate

freshness.

Old David was going to die, but because those who watched him practised

an art of cheerful concealment, it was a very happy time for him, quite

the happiest time he had known since boyhood.

Propped up in bed, he watched all that went on about him, and he looked

at the flowers in the window. He knew who had sent the flowers and,

when he appeared, Simon Hart had to bear the scrutiny of a pair of old

eyes that surveyed him unwaveringly from the pillow. When Rachel

brought the visitor around to the bedside, a look of sly satisfaction

radiated from the old man's features. Interest and an eager zest for

life still flourished in him; though Death held him hand and foot he

was too true a poet to heed the approach of so material a guest. The

last days of his life were enveloped in ineffable peace. Wrapped about

in comforts, he had no knowledge of the tragedy of Rachel's existence,

but rested in the serene belief that Heaven itself provided him with

doctors, medicines, luxuries. His poor darkened brain worked with

incredible slowness, and it was touching to behold him enjoying a

dainty meal that Rachel had contrived to provide for him. Smiling and

fresh, with a napkin tucked under his chin, he would point out such

food on the tray as appealed to his fancy; then she would lift it to

his lips, feeding him as one feeds a bird. And often the poor child's

face was far paler than his and her hands trembled with hunger.

Only her absorbing, desperate love for him sustained her. For this

grandfather, who in the enthusiasm of his heart was so like a little

child, Rachel willingly would have laid down her life. No sacrifice

was beyond her; and as the old man's soul was enveloped in that

atmosphere of rare and delicate perceptions that heralds the final

liberation, her soul, through its love, was permitted entrance into the

same region of mysterious joys; so that up to the last moment they bore

each other company.

Sometimes, troubled by the thickness of his speech, old David looked at

his young companion with piteous eyes; but the condition was the result

of weakness, she assured him; later the words would come. To amuse him

she searched the papers for humorous anecdotes and even invented funny

little stories of her own. Then how they laughed together! The room

reëchoed with such merry peals it seemed Death took the hint and kept

at a distance. Indeed, the old man entering that world of which we

know nothing, and the young girl surrounded by the evils of this, by

their very innocence and helplessness held at bay all the menacing

powers of darkness, and under that attic roof, in the midst of a sordid

city, they lived a life more profound and universal than its thousands

of passionate men and women thronging the streets below.

When Simon Hart called, as he did every evening, it seemed to him that

all the needs of the sick man were met. He sent flowers and fruit for

old David, but a sense of delicacy kept him from offering Rachel

financial assistance. Though he had disliked particularly asking a

favour of his cousin, Julia Burgdorf, through her influence he was able

to obtain for the young girl piece-work in an establishment that made a

specialty of hand-painted trifles. This appealed to him as the most

considerate way of helping her. Little did he realize that nursing

left Rachel scant opportunity for the painting which required

concentration. But by forcing herself to do without rest and almost

without food, by employing every spare moment in doing all sorts of

simple, ill-paid work that could be carried on at home, such as the

directing of circulars and envelopes, mending and sewing for the

neighbours, the impossible thing was accomplished. In quarters,

half-dollars, dollars, the necessary money was swept together to cover

the needs of the sick man. It was one of those prodigious, superhuman

struggles constantly attempted by love. But of this struggle, though

he came daily to the apartment, Simon Hart realized little. With the

instinctive dread that characterizes persons of supersensitive nature,

he had trained himself not to see to the bottom of things, not to

investigate hearts too deeply. While watching Rachel with melancholy,

ambiguous eyes, he was practically blind to the difficulty of her

situation.

His sense of loneliness, always painful, was aggravated now, and in her

presence he was tormented by an inexpressible need of intimate

companionship. He could not bear to have her leave the room; he was

jealous of the doctor and Emily Short, since they took something of her

from him. And how little he received!--a word when he came and when he

left and now and then a smile. When Rachel cast on him a smile from

swiftly-parted tremulous lips, a smile that vanished ere it had scarce

taken form, Simon's restlessness increased and his desire for affection

became a feverish demand. Fortunate for her that it was himself rather

than another who saw her placed as she was. And reflecting that many a

man of the ravening-wolf type, in his place would have sought to take

advantage of her poverty, of her unprotected state, he grew hot with

anger. But she stood small chance of meeting such a one, and after all

Emily Short was a defence. Then the idea of marrying the girl

presented itself, looming mirage-like on the horizon of his mind, and

he felt that he was becoming ridiculous. He saw himself with the eyes

of that world in which Julia Burgdorf and his business associates were

the chief figures. The victim of a little unknown waif--not merely her

victim, her slave. In order to break the spell he forbade himself to

go to see her, and, that he might keep to the resolution, he started

without warning on a trip to Bermuda.

At first Nora Gage, influenced by shrewd calculations, acted in an

unexpected fashion. During the fortnight that old David lay between

life and death, Nora each day doled out a little money to Rachel. But

later, as the invalid began to improve, she stole into his room a

hundred times a day and noted the gathering life in his face with eyes

as watchful as a snake's. Sometimes she even extended a hand and

tested his pulse. Devotion to comfort was the ruling motive of Nora's

life, and, foreseeing a future wherein comfort was threatened, fear

seized upon her very vitals; and an agitation spread outward through

the whole bulk of her flesh. Nor was her situation undeserving of

sympathy. In vain Emily Short promised to reimburse her for all

expenditures on old David's account when the fall trade in hats should

open; Nora was sceptical of the security, as she was sceptical,

finally, of Simon Hart's intentions.

"He don't mean a thing, I'm sure of it," she muttered. "The idea of

thinking he'd marry her! I've been a fool." And Nora sighed heavily

as the alluring vision of the permanent home she had intended to demand

in Simon Hart's house, in return for the assistance she had rendered

old David, vanished in thin air.

Her generosity came abruptly to an end. The doctor might order new

medicines and old David, with the innocent egotism of the sick, demand

the comforts to which he had become accustomed, Nora was unmoved.

Gloating, she waited for Rachel to make an appeal. But the other,

aware of the nature with which she had to deal, was silent.

"Proud--proud to the end! Well, let her starve," Nora soliloquized,

and took herself to the public parks,--anywhere to escape the

atmosphere of gloom and terror that for her pervaded the apartment.

Simon Hart's continued absence awoke in Rachel a troubled amazement,

the more, as her grandfather constantly asked for him and she had to

invent excuses for his non-appearance; but she had little time for

reflection as the household in the Street of Masts was now put to sad

shifts. Poor folk are ever separated from want by the meagrest of

protections. They are like soldiers cowering behind a crumbling

embankment. Time, bringing the ever recurrent needs, is their

indefatigable enemy, and when these needs are multiplied, as in

sickness, with small chance for patching the wall, they can ill

withstand the siege. Finally there came an evening when Emily Short,

with a look of shame on her open countenance, repaired to a certain

shop around the corner, and thereafter no day passed when old David

lacked for any comfort, as no day passed when some article was not

missing from the bare little rooms.

"Let me go just this once," Rachel besought one evening early in

February, confronting the toy-maker, who was preparing to go out. "If

you wait to go around there--you know where I mean--you'll be late at

Madame Stedenthal's. You know she said eight o'clock; and you wouldn't

want to miss getting that order."

"But I don't like to have you," Emily protested.

Rachel motioned toward the room: "Run along. Grandfather's asleep;

I'll slip out and be back before he 'wakes." ...

She quitted the shop, pressing a hand to her burning cheeks. Then,

thrilled by the consciousness of the silver in her pocket, she hurried

forward. She had gone only a few steps when someone touched her arm.

She turned and saw Simon Hart.

Manifestly he had been following her: on his face was stamped a look of

commiseration and embarrassment.

At once her old imperious pride was alive. Shrinking fiercely from the

observation and sympathy of this man, she spoke curtly:

"I'm very glad to have met you. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll say

good-night; Grandfather is alone."

She swung round so that he could no longer see her deeply wounded face;

he saw only her hat and part of her veil and her long shabby cloak.

"Miss Beckett--Rachel!" he exclaimed, in a note of despairing appeal.

"May I not go up to see your grandfather? I have been away--I have

just returned. I did not wait; I was so anxious," he concluded. And

he looked anxious.

She paused. After all, her grandfather would be pleased to see him.

Already her short-lived resentment that he had witnessed her

humiliation was merged in bodily languor.

They mounted the stairs and as he saw how she clung to the railing with

her hand, Simon Hart was seized afresh with surprise and horror. The

pencilings of fatigue under her eyes accentuated her pallor and this

morbid diminution in her beauty, lent her a poignant charm. She laid a

hand on the door.

Amazed at the change in the dismantled room, which was no less than the

change in her, he stood rooted to the threshold. Then he dropped his

head in his hands.

Rachel, who suffered a faint return of embarrassment, refrained from

looking at him.

"There," she said nervously, laying aside her wraps, "now I'll go and

see if Grandfather's awake."

He was beside her: "Rachel, why--why didn't you let me know?"

"Let you know what?" and she stood back against the wall, striving to

repell him with her eyes.

"That you were in want--in need. You could have written--" he

floundered helplessly; then swept on almost in tears--"Didn't you know

that I would help you gladly--thankfully? Oh where were my eyes! And

you have been struggling!--Oh God, forgive me." He drew her bended

wrist against his breast, and the shudders of his frame went to hers.

She tried to withdraw the hand. "I don't understand."

"So thin--" he continued, perusing her face, "so thin; almost starved.

And no one to help you--not anyone. And I left you; I didn't even

write--"

He did not finish the sentence. He was on his knees, kissing the hem

of her dress.

She stared at him in a trance of amazement and at that moment a voice

sounded from the room across the passage.

"Rachel, be that ye? Why don't ye come in here?"

Simon Hart rose to his feet. "Let me help you, Rachel."

She moved her lips, though no sound passed them. He threw his hands on

her shoulders and his eyes into the depths of hers. "I ask nothing

that you cannot give," he said with mournful softness. "I know that

you do not--love me--but later, if you became my wife--"

She shook her head, trying to twist free.

"If you were my future wife," he amended, "I could give your

grandfather every care."

He had struck the right note.

Perceiving it, desperately he followed up his advantage. Later he

would feel shame, but not now with her frightened breath on his face

and her lips so close. His gentleness was transformed into boldness.

Love wrought madness in him who had never before known its mystery or

its power.--"He should lack for nothing."

At that moment her grandfather's voice, high-pitched, querulous,

sounded from the other room.

"I hear ye, Rachel--both of ye; why don't ye come in here?"

Slowly her frozen look gave place to one of tense questioning. "He

shall lack for nothing? you promise it?"

Simon Hart bowed his head: "I promise."

"Very well, then;" and all the life and youth dropped from her voice.

"Shall I go in to him?" he asked, stunned by his victory.

She nodded.

He moved to the door. Then retracing his steps, he passed his arms

about her and pressed her to him. "You shall never regret this,

Rachel. Oh, how I love you!" he muttered, with his lips on her head.

Pushing the hair back from her temples as if its weight annoyed her, in

the silent room she paced restlessly. Presently she paused and looked

her problem in the face. She was alone, powerless, penniless. But for

herself she was not afraid!--and she folded her arms on her

breast,--but for him who was dying?

Her arms fell.

The doctor had said that he might linger months, even years. And oh

the relief, the unspeakable happiness, of being able to give him every

luxury! She smiled; then sickened. The very blood in her veins

repudiated the sacrifice. It was long since she had thought of Emil

St. Ives as she had been accustomed to think of him during the blissful

time at Pemoquod Point. Now the memory of him suddenly beat all over

her weakened frame. She belonged to her love as the wood belongs to

the flame. Wringing her hands together, she cast herself on the couch.

And over and over her in a flood waves of pain, of joy, of despair, of

triumph, of agony, of gladness, of self-immolation, of selfishness

rolled and rolled.

Out of her ordeal she emerged, brought to a sense of the immediate

present by hearing her name called. She stood up. But even through

her misery she was conscious of the amazing strength of her

grandfather's voice.

She ran to him.

A magnetic current of happiness had penetrated his paralyzed frame, for

when she leaned over him, he addressed her with a tongue no longer

trammelled.

"I told ye he'd come back," he exulted. "I heared ye when ye both come

in and I knew it was him. Now ain't ye got anything to tell me,

Rachel?" And he smiled up at her slyly.

"I don't know what you mean, Grandfather," she said.

"I mean--What have ye two been talkin' about in t'other room?" he broke

off. "I know it was about somethin' important; and he don't deny it,"

with a gesture toward Simon.

Simon Hart stood with one hand resting on the table. Rachel avoided

his glance.

"He said perhaps you'd tell me," urged the old man. "Now, what is it?"

She was silent.

"What is it?" he repeated. "Did he ask you to marry him?" and he

plucked at her hand.

"Yes, he did."

"I knew it--I knew it," he cried excitedly. "And you said you would,

didn't you, Rachel?" he asked, peering at her anxiously. "Somehow I

should like to feel as if it was settled," he added wistfully.

Then she understood. In spite of his cheerfulness, old David knew

quite well that he was going to die; and so great was his love for her,

it had triumphed over the barriers imposed by his disease. With his

poor clouded faculties he was trying to make provision for her.

Unable to stand, she rested her forehead on the pillow. He touched her

hair and suddenly her heart expanded. All her thought was for him now.

The danger that had threatened him was averted. They could not take

him away from her, they could not carry him away and place him in a

spotless, terrible ward, on a little bed, to die among strangers.

Instead, she would be able to care for him until the end came. It was

enough. What more could she ask? And tightening her grip on his

sleeve, she wept the tears which the constant, torturing thought of

weeks, the unwearying, ceaseless attempts to earn money, had not wrung

from her. In an ecstasy of tenderness, she received the old man back

from the verge of a lonely, unattended death.

Simon Hart had dropped into a chair. His elbow was among the medicine

vials; his hand over his face. Old David looked doubtfully from one to

the other; after an instant, exerting himself, he caught at Simon's

free hand and placed Rachel's in it. "There!" he sighed, and while

they watched him, he settled back on the pillows, his lids drooping.

Exhausted, he fell asleep, his parted lips giving to his face the aloof

expression of death.

It was as if he had been waiting the consummation of this one hope, for

after that he sank rapidly. During the anguished days that followed,

Rachel never permitted herself to question the step she had taken. She

expected to fulfil her promise, meanwhile she preferred not to

calculate the price of her sacrifice. She thought only of her

grandfather, and if she had been told to die in order to save him, she

would have been dead.

Simon Hart had lost standing in his own eyes. He tried to view the

situation complacently, to find in it cause for self-justification.

Then came the conviction that he must release her. For the present,

however, let the engagement stand. It quieted the old man's fears and

left Rachel free to receive at his hands the assistance she otherwise

would have hesitated to accept.

Upon his advice a trained nurse was secured and lodgings in the

neighbourhood were found for Nora Gage. As the last hours of old

David's existence approached, Simon began to nourish timid hopes, for

Rachel appeared to regain confidence in him. In spite of the part he

had played, she relied on him, and drew comfort from his eyes in which

she detected so much sympathy.

The physician had made his last visit; her grandfather would scarcely

last until dawn. His eyes, partly concealed by their flaccid lids,

held that look which is not to be misunderstood; his head on its

strained and swollen neck lay twisted to the side on the pillow; the

fingers of one hand, already cold, plucked constantly at the coverlid

with that melancholy, mechanical movement of the dying, as if his

spirit, longing to be free, would fain rid itself of all encumbrances.

The left side, instead of the right, was now stricken.

A few minutes before sunrise, there came a change. He had lain so

quiet for many hours that they thought he slept, but suddenly Rachel

perceived that his eyes were wide open and that he was listening

intently to the wind whistling in the space between the houses. Its

rushing passage produced a last flicker in the fantastic mind.

"The cars! We're whirlin'--" His mouth opened in astonishment.

"Stop, look, listen!" he muttered faintly, turning his eyes to hers.

Then the air ceased to undulate, grew quiet, above his still and amazed

face.

The first golden beams of the sun peeped in at the windows as old

David's soul, in the majesty of its innocence, passed from earth.

CHAPTER VIII

A WOMAN'S CAPRICE--A FATHER'S REPENTANCE--A

LOVER'S SELF-CONQUEST--A GIRL'S PITY

When Simon Hart agreed to his cousin's plan, and Rachel, despite her

protests, was conveyed from the hospital to Julia Burgdorf's house, he

did not experience the unpleasantness he had anticipated. The

personality of his cousin was not agreeable to him. He had never liked

her; partly, because he was jealous of a social prestige which he

himself had never been able to attain; partly, because he disapproved

of her dropping her family name, for Julia, when a child, had adopted

the cognomen of a distant relative from whom she had inherited a

fortune. But the fundamental reason for his disapprobation lay deeper,

concealed in the current of their common blood.

Though diametrically opposed to Julia in character, Simon was able to

comprehend in her traits which he especially disliked. They were like

two compounds containing different proportions of the same ingredient.

In Simon the strain of their common ancestry had been fused with a

widely alien current. From his mother, a pale-featured, down-looking

woman, much given to keeping her own counsel, he had inherited his air

of secrecy, his pallor, as well as his capacity for profound and

delicate feeling. But in Julia the original current of the Hart blood

retained all its primitive strength; plainly, she was one whose

forefathers had loved "wine and women and wild boars," and in every

trait she was more closely related to old Nicholas than was Simon.

Though Nicholas now quaveringly sought the beauties of a butterfly's

wing, time was when he had pursued woman's glances with the same

ardour; in fact, he had been in his day a cup of lusty life. It was

the very irony of fate that this legacy of the Hart spirit had passed

his own son and descended in all its troubled richness on his sister's

child. The only difference between uncle and niece was that which is

accounted for by sex. Julia, being no fool, accepted the restraints

that hamper the existence of a conventional woman. Like Nicholas she

had slight sympathy with Simon. The antagonism of the cousins was

mutual. In speaking of Julia, Simon habitually employed an ironical

tone; while Julia treated Simon with condescension, and, behind his

back, with ridicule. But now one subject united them.

Immediately after the death of old David, Rachel, exhausted and

ill-nurtured, was conveyed to a private hospital, a victim of typhoid

fever. For a time the outcome of the struggle appeared dubious, but

three weeks after the fever declared itself, she rallied. Then it was

that Simon went to Julia with the general points of her story and a

hesitating request.

The girl was absolutely alone, without relatives or friends. Would

Julia visit her? The picture was a pathetic one, and marvelling at

Simon's newly developed powers of eloquence, she consented. At sight

of the invalid, her curiosity, already lively, increased to a point

that assured decisive action. Moreover, she conceived for the young

girl, with her forlorn face, one of those superficial attachments with

which such women sometimes seek to fill their empty lives.

As soon as Rachel was convalescent Julia insisted, nay, commanded, that

she be transferred to her own house. A visit of a few days in novel

and comfortable surroundings, she argued, would tend to hasten her

recovery. The fact was, Julia desired further opportunity to study the

girl who had made a conquest of her cousin. Simon's ill-concealed

interest in her afforded Julia delicious amusement. She had never

deemed him capable of falling in love. When he announced that he hoped

sometime to marry Miss Beckett, Julia's amazement was complete. Hoped!

She gasped, then shrugged. What did he mean by taking that tone, a man

of his position? It was mock humility--hypocrisy more disgusting than

any of which she had dreamed him capable. But she soon discovered that

his lack of assurance was justified.

At first she doubted. The "young person" (for it was thus Julia in

thought designated Rachel) but cherished deep-laid plans, holding Simon

the more securely by appearing not to desire to hold him. It was

clever acting, and notwithstanding that she felt bound to oppose the

ridiculous match, Julia could but admire the fair schemer who used her

weakness and illness as additional bait for hooking such a fine fish.

Then this theory exploded and she saw the situation in its piquancy:

Rachel was actually indifferent to the entire question of the marriage.

Having made the astonishing discovery, Julia renounced her worldliness

for the time. Had the circumstances been other than just what they

were, had the stranger been as eager for the marriage as Simon himself,

Julia assuredly would have employed every means to frustrate their

plans, and would have taken a malicious pleasure in her own manoeuvring

because of rooted antipathy to Simon. As matters stood, however, she

resolved to do the ignorant and unambitious young thing a service in

spite of herself. Instead of a few days, Julia begged to keep the

invalid indefinitely, and it was owing to her entreaties, rather than

to Simon's arguments, that Rachel finally consented to remain a

fortnight.

Then Julia applied herself, with the utmost discretion, to furthering

the romance. She attempted to prick the girl to interest by discreetly

praising Simon. He was very much looked up to by members of the

Jewellers' Association of which he was the president; as a business

man, as a member of society at large, he was irreproachable: and she

made these statements without a curl of the lip. Rachel listened in

silence. Then Julia employed other tactics. She waxed spiteful in her

remarks about her cousin; she even laughed at his peculiarities. An

oyster was not more secretive, and save for his trick of running his

fingers through his hair in moments of agitation or excitement, one

would never dream that he knew an emotion. At that, the other raised

resentful eyes. She saw nothing ridiculous about Mr. Hart; on the

contrary, his manner was unusually dignified. In justice to him she

avowed the fact, then would say no more.

As yet Rachel was too weak to consider her situation. Grief had

excluded every other emotion; even memory of Emil had flagged. Ill at

ease and oppressed by the luxury around her, she strove to conceal

every sign of her desperate sorrow and it was only at night that she

relaxed command over herself. Then, convulsed with sobs, she lay in

the darkness and, stretching out her hands, whispered, "Grandfather,

are you there?" Her despair was the deeper because of the fantastic

conceit that old David's simple soul was kept away by the richness of

her surroundings. Had she remained in the poor rooms of the tenement,

his spirit could have found her readily, descending out of that patch

of pure sky visible through the dormer windows, even as the souls of

saints and angels descend out of the blue in old pictures.

These woful imaginings, incident to physical weakness, for a time

oppressed her; but later, as her strength came, she turned from them.

She began to look at life with apprehensive eyes, though she still said

little.

Simon felt that she was reading him and agonized under her gaze.

Vainly he tried to speak the word that honour, pity, decency demanded.

Could he have beheld her existing without masculine companionship, he

would have released her, but the possibility of an unknown rival in the

shrouded future, a rival whose love she would return, sealed his lips.

Out of her presence the tension of the situation was relieved. When no

longer confronted by her helpless and mutely accusing youth, it was a

simple matter for him to convince himself that the step he had

contemplated was unnecessary. Girls as young as she were material

easily moulded; if she did not love him now, she would later.

Meanwhile the situation was ambiguous, and for that reason, if for no

other, an early marriage was advisable.

Despite these arguments, he began to show the effect of mental torture.

The man was passing through fire. At last even Julia was moved by his

look. As Rachel was the cause of the unnatural, strained situation,

she proposed that something be done to rouse her spirits.

"Give her a taste of pleasure," Julia advised, "She's a little frozen

ghost now, but I've yet to see the girl whose gloom won't yield to

amusement and excitement."

With an eagerness almost pathetic, Simon agreed to this proposal. But

just what could they do?

The answer came promptly: "Dress her properly and carry her off to some

gay resort for the early spring. I will take her in charge, if you say

so?"

But before they had developed a plan, the problem was unexpectedly

solved. Emily Short was the curative agent.

It was a cold morning in March, and Emily, barring the interruption of

the doctor's visit, had been with Rachel for an hour when Simon

arrived. As he entered his cousin's hall he met the physician who was

just getting into his great-coat. Simon paused to consult him.

"These women are certainly astonishing creatures," the physician

remarked, settling his muffler. "The more experience I have in the

medical profession, the more I feel that, owing to their nervous

vitality, their recuperative power is prodigious. Miss Beckett has

just had some news, I gather," he explained, "and it's done more for

her than any amount of tonics. I imagine she knows very clearly what

she wants to do, and my advice is, don't oppose her. Good morning, Mr.

Hart." And the doctor passed out through the door which was opened for

him by the obsequious butler.

Simon felt a sense of gnawing irritation.

"Now does that mean that he advises allowing her to return to that

unsanitary tenement, if that chances to be her wish," he asked himself,

"or has Julia set something on foot without consulting me?"

It was not without a struggle that Simon had brought himself to trust

his cousin; and now, in spite of her continued kindness and avowed

interest in his plans, he constantly dreaded her interference.

It being the usual hour for his visit, he did not have himself

announced, but proceeded directly to Julia's sitting room where Rachel

usually spent the morning. As he went toward the door, the thick

carpet deadened his footsteps and he heard Rachel speaking in a voice

wrought to a high pitch:

"I never imagined things happened this way outside of novels. But is

Father alive? What do you say?"

"I should hardly say that he is," replied Emily. "If he were merely

sending the money to you by this person, who is so afraid of telling

his name, he'd have been apt to write and explain things."

"Yes, of course. But I must do what I can to find this John Smith.

Oh, I shall get well now! And isn't it providential, all this money,

and from my own Father? I can pay my debts now." The tone was

jubilant.

Simon Hart, with a sensation of fear and guilt, did not wait to hear

more. Pushing aside the strings of beads, the rattling of which jarred

intolerably on his nerves, he entered the coquettish apartment. As he

approached Rachel, avoiding collision with the divers chairs, screens,

tables with which the place was littered, his face revealed little of

what he was feeling.

On perceiving him, she half rose. Her breath grew short--or did he

imagine it?--her eyes narrowed, then filled once more with the

irradiating light of happiness. As their hands met he observed that

her cheeks were glowing. Only her extreme slenderness and her cropped

head told the story of recent illness.

"Oh, such news!" she cried, striving to repress her excitement. "Here,

sit down," indicating a chair beside her own, "and Emily, you tell

him." And as the little toy-maker took up the tale, Rachel looked into

his face. But hardly had Emily opened her lips than she was silenced.

"No, no, I'll tell him myself. What do you think! _I've heard from my

Father_! He has never seen me, I have never seen him, but suddenly he

sends some money." Here Rachel's eyes shot a question--or again, did

he imagine it?

"But you haven't exactly heard from him," Emily Short interrupted; "you

don't know anything positively."

At these words, to Simon's relief, Rachel turned from him. "But I tell

you I do know something positively, and that's enough," with a gesture

of pride, "if I never hear anything more. He sent this money to my

mother. Do you suppose that explains nothing to me?"

All at once she was the incarnation of tenderness and defiance. She

had retained from childhood a picture of her father limned in the

quaint language of old David. Now she in turn presented the portrait

to these strangers. In the light of that mystical tribunal, buttressed

so strongly by love and imagination, Thomas Beckett stood forth a

figure vastly human, passionate and compelling; and she defied them to

judge him otherwise.

But all at once she ceased twisting the tassels which adorned her

girdle and dropped her chin in the cup of her hand.

"Sometimes I feel that it was all owing to the sea," she continued;

"had we lived further inland I believe Father wouldn't have left us.

For the land is stationary, even the trees are tied to it by the foot;

while the sea--every drop is free. It can dash and gnaw its way

through the hardest substances. But man is not like the sea. He may

hurl himself upon life, yes--" The sentence concluded in a sigh.

At the beginning of this agitated speech Simon had gazed at her with

anxious curiosity; then he grew jealous of this father who drew her

thoughts so far afield from all he knew or sympathized with. He began

to congratulate her.

She did not heed him.

"So you can see how it came about, can't you?" and she looked first at

him and then at Emily. "Restless, dissatisfied, tormented, that's what

Father was. He asked something of life which life didn't give him, and

when the new ship he had helped to build was finished, he simply sailed

away in her."

This defence was painful to Simon, and Rachel all at once felt his

attitude.

"See," she said in an altered voice, "all this gold; seven hundred

dollars of it," and she indicated a box on the table. "It came from a

place in Massachusetts. Read this," thrusting into his hand a card on

which were printed the words:

"To Mrs. Lavina Beckett from her husband Thomas Beckett."

"And there was no letter of explanation? Do you mean to say that you

have no clue as to who forwarded the money?" Simon asked the question

because it seemed to be demanded of him. In reality he was not curious.

"Yes, we have a clue, but there was no letter except one which André

Garins, my old school friend, said was written to the postmaster at Old

Harbour by a man signing himself John Smith. This man asked if my

mother was still living there, but the postmaster is new to the place,

and doesn't know much about the people at the Point anyway; so he wrote

back that Mother was dead and that André Garins at Pemoquod could

probably give him information about the daughter, that is, about me."

"Yes; and just as soon as he gets this letter, that John Smith, or

whatever his rightful name is, sends his box of gold post-haste to your

friend, and directs on the outside that it be forwarded to you. I tell

Rachel that the man, whoever he may be, isn't anxious to have her get

in touch with him," added Emily, addressing herself to Simon. "It's my

opinion he's keeping back part of the money her father gave him, and I

think it's foolish for her to go and get all keyed up."

Simon was saved the necessity of answering.

"But why, if he's dishonest, did he send any money at all? But that's

not the point," Rachel went on; "I shan't rest until I've been to that

town in Massachusetts to see what I can learn about Father. Why do you

both try to discourage me? Oh, you don't understand!" And suddenly

the tears were streaming. She was too weak to combat them further.

Simon could not endure the sight of suffering; even the constant and to

a degree superficial tragedies of the lower animals and insects

tortured him; for that reason he never went near his father's room

where flies, still living, impaled on pins, seemed appealing to him for

the help he dared not give. Now his face twitched.

"But I assure you I do understand," he protested, "and I will either go

myself and make the necessary investigation, or I will accompany you

when you are sufficiently strong."

At these words she pressed his fingers warmly, though she shook her

head: "No, I should prefer--I should rather go alone."

"Rachel!" he cried, and looked his pain.

"Or I will take Emily."

She rose and pausing beside the table turned over a gold piece; then

she passed to a window where she stood.

"Grandfather always said that we should hear from Father sometime," she

exulted, "and I've a feeling that he knows _now_" and she glanced round

at them with a bright, almost crafty expression.

Simon drummed fingers on a knee. What effect would this wind-fall have

on their relationship? That she intended to free herself from her

financial obligation he gathered from the words he had chanced to

overhear. But as their interests would soon be identical, why did she

not ignore so small a matter? unless-- He threw an examining,

wretched look toward her and took her decision from the independent

bearing of her pretty shoulders.

At this point his reflections were interrupted. Julia had just

returned from an early round of the most fashionable shops. She came

in, briskly ungloving her hands; then stood still. Rachel sprang

toward her. The girl flushed, talked with her hands, laughed. At last

she had no unenthusiastic listener. Unaccustomed to the sight of gold,

Emily Short, ever since the opening of the box, had been fairly awed.

To think that she had left it under the bed the night before, and that

morning had conveyed it openly through the streets! Happiness at

Rachel's good fortune surged high, none the less her impulse was to

temper the other's excitement. Julia was wiser. She smothered Rachel

in an embrace. Pushing up her veil she kissed her on both cheeks and

even shed a few tears over her. At that moment, despite his dejection,

Simon warmed to something like affection for his cousin.

After much argument Rachel was allowed to follow her own course.

Accompanied by Emily Short she departed for the mill town from which

John Smith had written. She spent a week in a vain search, then giving

the matter into the hands of a local detective, she returned to New

York.

Simon met the two women at the station. The greetings over, he

possessed himself of Rachel's bag and led the way to a cab. She

touched his arm.

"Not to Miss Burgdorf's--to Emily's, please."

Each paled. Her eyes as ever read right in.

When she was seated in the cab, she leaned forward: "And you will come

this evening?"

He bowed, stiff as a ramrod, strained about the lips.

During the days of Rachel's absence his soul had been a field of

conflict. He had written her letters only to destroy them. Why be so

certain of her attitude? Women were inexplicable; he might be

mistaken. He postponed the decision. Now he must release her; now

when the issue was forced, when there was no semblance of generosity in

the act. And he despaired of making her believe what he strove to make

himself believe, as a last stay to self-respect, that the circumstance

of her illness had alone delayed the step. The make-shift engagement

had rested on her dire need of money, on his ability to supply it. Why

blink the fact?

When the cab containing Rachel and her companion rolled away, he walked

toward Fifth Avenue, without realizing what he was doing, stunned as if

he had received a blow. For an hour he walked in a sort of stupour.

Then he entered a cafe. As the blood circulated sluggishly in his

veins, he had fallen into the habit of drinking moderate but constantly

repeated quantities of liquor; the stimulant was no more manifest

through the pallor of his countenance than wine that is poured into an

opaque vessel, but it seemed to quicken his faculties. Summoning an

attendant, he gave an order. He remained in the cafe until evening.

When he entered Emily Short's room, Rachel stood near the table well in

the light of the lamp. She greeted him with a touch of constraint.

More than usual her eyes kept a watch on him. Her whole countenance

announced subtly and triumphantly that she had it in her power to

redeem her debt: then, perhaps he would release her! This thought

seemed to flash even from her hands.

He looked swiftly at her hands. She was fingering a small packet of

which his misery divined the nature. She had wrapped it in tissue

paper. This girlish device to render the thing she planned to do less

distressful, struck a blow at his heart.

"One word--listen to me!" he cried, keeping an agonized gaze on the

packet, "I no longer wish--I realize that to unite your life with

mine--I know the very thought is painful--"

Lifting his eyes, he saw an expression like a darting of light.

Conscious that he was not speaking as he had intended to speak, he drew

his fingers through his hair. "You are free," he stammered, "it was

never my intention to hold you to your promise. But it is impossible

that you should comprehend my struggle--"

He broke off, striving for his usual calm, and this effort to place a

mask over his anguish produced on her much the same effect as the

concealing piece of paper had produced on him.

Caught in a tide of emotion, she extended a hand: "But I can--I do

understand. Haven't you shown your feeling for me constantly? You

have been kind--kind!"

He shook his head. "No, no," he muttered, "not kind; helpless. I

tried more than once to release you; I beg you to believe this. But I

loved you too much." His face expressed acute suffering; his lower lip

trembling so that he could scarcely pronounce the words.

"Can you forgive me?"

No concealment now. A naked, humble, imploring, despairing soul looked

from his eyes.

It was not in her to resist such an appeal. Her heart flamed with

pity, pity that annihilated all selfish exultation. "There is nothing

to forgive."

"But you do forgive me?" he insisted.

"I thank you--I thank you from the bottom of my soul."

Again he shook his head disowning his right to gratitude. His eyes

once more watched what she held.

All at once, reading his look, the discrepancy between the nature of

her indebtedness and the sordid return she had planned, struck her.

She laid the packet on the table.

He looked up, questioningly.

So repugnant did the action she had contemplated now appear to her that

she hung her head.

"I no longer wish to give it to you," she said in a stifled voice.

"Grandfather's happiness, my own life--can money pay for such things?"

He took her by the hand.

It was some moments before he could regain command of himself. Then he

said:

"I am always your friend, Rachel."

She nodded.

For some moments longer they stood, their hands joined. Presently he

touched her forehead with his lips. "Good-bye."

She stood as he had left her, her bosom rising and falling softly and

heavily, her eyes betraying all that was passing within her. Never did

countenance more plainly announce a struggle. By this final act, he

had erased from the scroll any charge against him of dishonour and

selfishness. Her instinctive trust of him, persisting in the face of

his weakness, was vindicated. The flame of her liking leapt higher.

Open-lipped, open-eyed, open-eared, she listened to his retreating

steps.

Momentarily the consciousness of her debt to him increased. She was

allowing him to go--this man who had aided her in the blackest hour of

her life; who loved her, who offered her all a man can offer a woman.

She placed him high, herself low. She saw him noble, herself craven.

To receive so much and to give nothing! It was contrary to her nature.

But one return she could make! Above waves of confusion the thought

flashed and flashed.

Was she capable of the sacrifice? Deeply she sounded her heart. Her

life was empty, irretrievably, permanently empty and desolate, she told

herself with the sureness of the tragic young. To what better use put

its fruitless days? The idea assumed the brightness of a star above

troubled deeps. She sprang to the door, calling.

He did not answer, though his step was still faintly distinguishable in

the hall.

Bending over the well of the staircase, she repeated her call.

The footsteps halted: then from the darkness below she heard him

ascending.

CHAPTER IX

RACHEL--SIMON

Her heroism was of the youthful, purblind, impetuous order. She had

reasoned falsely and acted generously. But she was not one to sink

wittingly to a lower level. Later, when she suspected the truth, she

did not admit it to her own heart--least of all to her own heart. She

was very glad of what she had done.

But she delayed the marriage; there were preparations to make. For no

reason that anyone could fathom, she insisted on remaining in the

Street of Masts. One concession she made: at Simon's urgent request

she consented to retain Nora Gage. The two occupied the old rooms

across the hallway from Emily Short.

The money received from her father was sufficient to supply Rachel's

needs and even permitted the preparation of a simple wardrobe. Under

Emily's supervision she planned and cut out and sewed feverishly for

days together. Then abruptly she would abandon her needle. She bought

books and endeavoured to teach herself French. She was never idle.

"You are overdoing," Simon remonstrated. "You will make yourself ill

with these things."

She shook her head. Activity was good for her.

With the success of his suit, Simon had recovered poise. His manner

was dignified and somewhat stiff. He spoke slowly and in a

well-modulated voice. To the world he was as he had been formerly; but

Rachel read deeper.

She knew that he desired to be gallant, even witty. And this effort to

be all that she wished him to be touched her profoundly. Constantly he

was bringing gifts. Offering them to her, he would watch her face to

see if he had selected wisely. She perfectly understood this desire to

offer something that would afford pleasure. Had she not experienced

the same impulse? though she had not been able to gratify it. When she

met Emil St. Ives in the cemetery at Old Harbour--how long ago it

seemed now--instead of gifts she had been able to give him only an

earnest, unswerving attention. This listening on the part of a girl to

his long, often technical explanations, had he valued it, as she valued

Simon's presents? But these reflections were checked by a prompt

warning from within. Danger lay that way. Memory would prove a

scourge if indulged and she did not want to feel.

Notwithstanding the approaching realization of what he had desired so

long, Simon Hart still had moments when he suffered. The Street of

Masts had always been an obnoxious quarter in his eyes, though for a

short period, the fact that Rachel dwelt in it had somewhat modified

its objectionable features. But that was before their engagement. Now

the entire section stirred in him a positive repugnance. That she, his

future wife, should elect to remain in a sordid setting when she might

have been surrounded by every luxury, filled him with a dull sense of

anger and chagrin. But he was unequal to the task of remonstrating.

Whenever he thought of speaking strongly to her on the matter, timidity

overcame him. Knowing what her feeling was for him, he shrank from the

appearance of urging any claim. Julia Burgdorf by her attitude

increased his discomfort.

Ever since Rachel's refusal to return to her house when she had

expected her, Julia, with the childish pique of a woman accustomed to

having every whim gratified, had washed her hands of her. Whenever she

saw Simon she bantered him on the subject of his prolonged engagement.

"Is the happy day fixed yet?" she would cry, with eye and shoulder

play. "No? Is it possible! The headstrong young person hesitates to

renounce her freedom? Even the prospect of escaping life in an attic

does not influence her? Extraordinary!"

Whenever he went to see Rachel, Simon was beset by the dread that he

might meet one of his business acquaintances. What if by chance it

became known that he intended to marry a young woman who lived on the

lower East side? Things like that easily leaked out. Finally his

sensitiveness increased to the point where he shrank even from the

frank gaze of the children in the street, a gaze which singled him out

because of his clothes, his gait, his strangeness to their world. More

than all else he feared the curiosity of members of his own household.

The maid who had admitted Rachel and her grandfather when they called

at the house had left his service. When Rachel came there as his bride

nothing of her history would be known to the servants. None the less

he felt that Theresa Walker, his housekeeper, eyed him shrewdly. Not

only this, he was convinced that she had communicated her suspicions to

Peter, the coachman. Otherwise, why should Peter, who was old and

stupid, wear such a significant look because he, Simon, failed to use

the horses, as formerly, for a short time every evening?

However, though he suffered for the reasons just related, he was, on

the whole, very tranquil. Nor was his engagement his only cause for

satisfaction. He was about to bring out his book on gems. It was a

voluminous work, weighty, carefully prepared, extensively illustrated.

He awaited its appearance with eagerness. When the first copy arrived

from the publisher he took it the same evening to Rachel.

She had had a trying day. Her modest preparations could not be

indefinitely prolonged. Even Emily Short, who had been a most exacting

and untiring assistant, acknowledged that three days would see the

completion of the wardrobe. Rachel listened and acquiesced. Emotion,

out of the depths of her, still sent up momentary, lurid flashes, but

Reason smothered the flashes with impetuous arguments. Finally Reason

hurled Honour and Duty, a combined extinguisher, on the flame. Though

triumphant in her virtuous decision to give Simon the information he

had awaited so patiently, she was in an exasperated mood when he

arrived. Her mood demanded a tangible grievance and he found her with

anger-crimsoned cheeks inspecting a dress.

"I ought never to have trusted it to that ignorant seamstress," she

cried. "I ought to have given it to that woman whose address your

cousin sent me. It's my own fault that it's ruined."

"But what's wrong with it?" he asked, taking a fold of the material

between a thumb and finger.

She frowned. "Everything's wrong. It doesn't fit for one thing; and

it's too long for another. But it doesn't matter. Let us talk no more

about it." And seating herself beside the lamp, she took up a bit of

hemstitching. She drew the needle through the dainty material, still,

however, exhibiting strong signs of annoyance. Everything excited her

now.

"Emily and I have accomplished a tremendous amount this week," she said

by way of preface to her important announcement. "We're getting ahead

finely."

"Ah, that's good," he said. "But remember not to overshoot the mark,

Rachel; there'd be no wisdom in that. And now to prove that I've not

been idle while you've been slaving with your pretty fingers, I have

brought this. You know I told you that before long I hoped to be able

to complete the work."

She did not at once comprehend to what he referred, but she saw that he

wished to tell her something flattering to himself, and by means of

questions she led him on.

With a smile, he drew the book from its wrappings.

Her needle-work slipped to the floor and she received the volume in

both hands. "Oh, Simon!"

"Do you like it?"

"How handsome it is! And how fine these coloured plates are! Oh what

it must mean to you to see this work at last in definite shape." For

she suddenly appreciated all the joy that lay for him, the author,

between those stiff new pages. The last vestige of her ill nature

vanished and she looked up at him eagerly.

"And the indications are that it is going to be well received," he told

her, with an air of satisfaction. "I've seen some of the advance

notices. They could scarcely be more complimentary."

Like most women Rachel adored in a man power to achieve distinction.

She counted it an additional proof of strength. She had been drawn to

Emil partly because of his genius which had compelled her to look up.

But thus far, though she appreciated his essential worth, she had not

been successful in encouraging her imagination to dwell on Simon and

invest him with uncommon attributes. A little shiver of excitement ran

through her.

The consciousness of shining had called forth a look on Simon's face.

"The _Courier_ says it's a work which is bound to attract attention,

relating as it does all the old legends connected with gems, besides

giving solid facts of their history."

She had no reason for thinking the book was not what he believed it to

be, a work of merit, possibly of unique value. She nodded, so anxious

to see him burnished, that she saw him burnished.

"Even the reviewer of the _Messenger_, usually cynical, speaks well of

it."

"I am very, very glad." Her voice thrilled with gratification.

"I knew you would be," he returned feelingly. "This copy is for you."

She put out her hand.

He grasped it, folding it against his cheek. "You know how you can

best thank me, don't you?" he said. He was not a lover to be

inconsiderately treated by any woman. At the moment he was singularly

handsome.

With her free hand she turned the pages of the book. An involuntary

sigh lifted her breast.

"Can't you tell me to-night, Rachel?" he urged. "I've waited so long

to know?"

She had let her head drop lower. In reality she was impatient that she

still had to struggle with herself. At his last words she lifted her

face. "I was going to tell you to-night," she said. "Will two weeks

from Wednesday do?"

CHAPTER X

THE BIRD IN THE BOX

It was mid-winter, season of the early-lighted lamp. The mortal part

of old David had lain in the grave for a twelvemonth. It was as if

Heaven itself sought to do honour to his innocence. Contributing flake

after flake of snow with the aid of that great artisan the wind, it had

built up a gleaming monument to his memory.

But in the city the office of the angels was performed with greater

difficulty. Patiently they flung a mantle of snow over the island.

They spread it smoothly in the streets, festooned it over the arches of

the bridges, tucked it cunningly away in the bell towers of the

churches. They mounted to the tops of the tallest buildings, laying

delicate ridges at the window ledges; stooped to the dingiest basement

doorways, carpeting them with white. Constantly the mantle was

displaced, shovelled aside, melted away; and the city, despite her

glitter of lights, was revealed. About every chimney-pot appeared a

circle of dampness, along every roof edge hung a row of tears; from end

to end of the city was the sound of dull dripping. Manhattan, like a

woman of pleasure, wept her sins, and the angels, the angels tried in

vain to render her seemly in the eyes of the good God.

The clock on the Grand Central tower was hard on five when the train

bearing Simon Hart and his bride drew in at the station. They were

returning from their prolonged wedding journey. Rachel adjusted her

veil. Though her lips were steady, her eyes were full of tears.

Within the hour they had whirled past the cemetery where her

grandfather was buried.

Simon assisted her from the train; then, with his heavy and dignified

gait, he led the way through the waiting-room.

"I wired my man to meet us. Ah, there he is!" he exclaimed, as they

reached the drifted pavement, and he expanded his chest with

complacency.

Peter with difficulty brought the horses to the curb and Simon, after

Rachel had taken her place in the carriage, climbed in himself. Then

he thrust his head through the door and ordered the man to drive home,

but Rachel plucked his sleeve.

"No, no," she coaxed, "tell him to drive to the shop first."

Simon, though he altered the direction, when he settled himself at her

side, looked at her with a slightly mocking expression.

"I want to get that fiddle from Mr. Mudge," she explained. "In his

last letter he said he'd found one and I want Nora to take it to André

when she goes. She's starting for Old Harbour at once and will call

for the fiddle as soon as I let her know we're here. Then, too," with

a side glance, "I'm anxious, if you must know, to learn from Mr. Mudge

how that heat-measurer turned out."

"That is, you wish to learn whether he has heard anything from your

enterprising inventor?"

"Well yes," she admitted; and they both laughed.

A few days before their marriage, Simon had chanced to remark that an

instrument for measuring heat in the furnace in which metals were

melted would be an important acquisition to the manufacturing jeweller.

Thereupon Rachel had begged him to submit the problem to Emil St. Ives.

To please her he had carried out her wish. Bearing a note from her to

the inventor (a note in which she incidentally announced her

matrimonial plans) Simon had sought out Emil whom he located readily

through the lithographing firm of Just and Lawless. Emil without

hesitation had promised the instrument within a week. Now three months

had elapsed without a word from him and at any mention of the subject,

Simon was wont to adopt a tone of raillery.

"Better give up your expectations along that line, my dear," he advised

now; "that instrument will never materialize; St. Ives, judging by his

look, is no more to be depended upon than the wild man from Borneo.

Besides, if we stop at the shop, we'll miss the overture of the opera,

and in Faust the overture is a consideration. Can't you restrain your

eagerness until morning?"

But Rachel was not to be swayed: "Tell the man to drive faster."

Since her marriage her restlessness had disappeared; she was calmer,

happier, and whenever she looked at her husband, whenever she surprised

in his eyes an expression of doubt and longing, affection rose in her

heart. The fact that he did not seek to interfere with her strange

friendships filled her with gratitude.

The carriage stopped before the jewellery establishment and the door

was opened to them by a boy in uniform. In the shop the electric bulbs

were shedding a soft radiance on the glass cases filled with gems.

Rachel had been there several times, but this was her first visit since

her marriage. Now she experienced a thrill of pleasure as she gazed

about her with the curiosity that animates a woman in such a place.

The quiet and subdued elegance of the accessories charmed her, and she

cast a glance at her husband. The star sapphires, the black opals, the

diamonds, arranged on squares of black velvet, lent him something of

their own lustre.

A clerk took the news of their arrival to Victor Mudge and a moment

later they were ushered into the workshop in the rear of the elaborate

showrooms. Here were machines for drilling holes through pearls, a

sink for washing the finished jewellery, a little forge where gold was

melted in crucibles. All the workmen had gone home except Victor who

often remained until late. Now he hobbled forward with a string of

seed pearls and a needle in his hands.

One of Victor's legs was shorter than the other by reason of a fall,

and as he walked he swayed like a little dry tree creaking in a breeze;

one felt he had no leaves. He was secretly well-pleased by his

employer's marriage, but it was a peculiarity of his seldom to address

him and to observe toward him a critical manner. Now, after greeting

the couple, he looked at Rachel exclusively.

The old goldsmith, besides being something of a musician was an

excellent judge of a violin, and at Simon's request he had obtained for

Rachel the instrument she wished to give André.

"It's not just what I wanted," he explained, "but neither is it bad."

And thereupon he drew the bow across the violin.

"Oh, how well you play!" she murmured, and then fell silent. She

regretted that she had withheld from André news of her marriage; she

should have told him at once. Now she planned to send him the violin

as a sign of her unalterable affection. When Victor handed the

instrument to Simon she aroused herself.

"And how is the _pyrometer_ coming on, Mr. Mudge?" she demanded with

animation. "Have you heard anything yet from Mr. St. Ives?"

Victor shrugging his shoulders, once more took into his fingers the

string of seed pearls and the needle. "He was in here about a week ago

and left a drawing; and yesterday I received a letter from him saying

he'd be in this evening to test something at the furnace. I'm waiting

his pleasure now."

Rachel suddenly laughed.

When she and Simon left the shop, when they were once more in the

carriage, she leaned to him impulsively and pressed her lips to his

cheek.

That evening she heard her first opera. In order to justify Simon's

pride in her and also to gratify her own innate sense of coquetry, she

had arrayed herself to great advantage. Whence came this knowledge of

the requirements of her new position, whence the pretty dignity of her

bearing? Perhaps from her Canadian great-grandfather and his English

wife; or this manner of hers may have been a free gift of the gods.

Excited by the strains of music that ascended from the orchestra, she

deepened and increased in beauty and in the immediate neighbourhood of

her husband's box became the centre of attention. But of this she was

only imperfectly aware. If, by chance, she did intercept an admiring

glance, she took it as a tribute to her dress of white satin, cunningly

embroidered in a design of gold flowers, to her coiffure, her fan, her

bouquet, to everything and anything but her own youthful countenance to

which the force of her emotions was adding an indefinable attraction.

She made a charming picture; her eyes half hidden by their lashes; her

face, her shoulders, even her round arms and her hands radiant with a

childlike happiness like sunshine.

Julia Burgdorf, who sat beside her, turning her head, looked at the

girl with a half-curious, half-wistful smile in her magnificent eyes;

while a man who was leaning on the back of her chair, an architect with

a pointed beard and ridiculously small hands and feet, watched Rachel

far more than he watched the stage. Simon Hart alone of those near

her, seemed unaware of her triumph. Holding his opera glass in his

gloved hands, he stared straight ahead of him with his weary,

unreadable gaze; and whenever his young wife addressed a word to him,

he leaned toward her sidewise without turning his head.

On the stage Farrar, as Marguerite, had just appeared at the window of

her cottage after her farewell to Faust. Then as the light faded

rapidly over the canvas trees, the spinning-wheel, the garden

seat,--Faust in doublet and cloak, with a long feather in his cap,

approached the casement, and there followed the poetic and sensuous

fever of the inimitable duet, in which two voices, a man's and a

woman's, sigh together those phrases of adoration, rapture

supplication, of surprise, terror, yielding. When finally Marguerite's

blond head sank on Faust's shoulder, the breath of their kiss seemed to

pass over the entire house.

Rachel's hand, incased in its long glove, closed nervously on the edge

of the box. She wore a look of troubled amazement; presently she began

plucking at the flowers of her bouquet. After the "garden" scene,

however, ashamed of her emotion and desiring to escape it, she ceased

following closely what went on upon the stage and gave herself up to

inspecting the audience.

The sight of the jewels on the heads and breasts of some ladies near

her, chained her shy glances. She remembered Victor Mudge and the

scene before the glowing forge. It was his cunning workmanship and the

workmanship of others like him that made such marvels possible. And

she rejoiced in the thought that her husband had an intimate knowledge

of such treasures and had even written a book about them.

A sense of that which is artificial in life was diffused everywhere,

and by and by, in that atmosphere of unreality she grew calmer. But

when at the conclusion of the performance, she found herself emerging

from the crowded auditorium, a part of a variegated stream of jewelled

heads, bare shoulders and black coats, she was conscious once more that

the irresistible mystery of the music had kindled in her nerves a

poetic fever. Suddenly she experienced a fresh impulse of affection

for Simon. "I owe all this to him," she thought; and from under the

hood of her opera cloak she glanced at his pale profile as he guided

her through the richly-dressed crowd.

In the foyer she discovered that she had dropped a little gold pin from

her hair and Simon retraced his steps to search for it. They had

parted some moments before from Julia Burgdorf and her companion. Now

Rachel strove to remain where Simon had left her inside the great

doors, but the surge of the crowd rendered this impossible. Jostled and

carried forward by the moving throng, she presently found herself

outside where the confusion was even greater.

From the sky the snow still drifted imperturbably. It glistened on the

shining backs of the horses, on the black tops of the carriages, on the

oilskin coats of the drivers, as, with a flourish of whips, they

brought their carriages opposite the brilliantly-lighted entrance and

received their precious loads.

Constantly the mellow stillness of the snowy night was disturbed by the

ringing voices of the porters as they cried out the numbers of the

carriages: "Two hundred and thirty-three!" "Three hundred and

forty-eight!" (The voices were urgent, brutal, quarrelsome.) "Four

hundred and forty-five!" All at once Rachel was startled by the call:

"Mr. Hart's carriage!" And simultaneously a tall figure approached

her. Lifting a cap from his rough locks the man looked closely into her

face.

There was snow in his beard, on his hair, on his shoulders. He was

smiling in a questioning fashion, and in his eyes, beneath their

overhanging brows, was an inconceivable life and vitality.

A look of joy flashed into Rachel's face and she extended a hand which

he took in both his. For a space, overwhelmed as two children, they

could do nothing but look each at the other.

Then the harsh cry of a porter broke the spell. "Here, drive on, you,"

he cried angrily to the Harts' coachman.

But Emil St. Ives raised his voice. "Wait a moment!" he called out;

then to Rachel,--"I'll keep a lookout for Mr. Hart;" and offering her

his arm he conducted her to the carriage.

When she had taken her place in it, the coachman left the line of

waiting vehicles and drove a few paces down the street. Emil followed.

As he approached, Rachel succeeded in letting down the glass of the

carriage door. She leaned with both arms on the ledge. Her cheeks

showed a heightened colour, and her lips, parting in smiles, displayed

her little teeth.

"I never expected--" she began unsteadily, "I didn't know that you

cared for the opera."

Emil looked at her boldly and joyously, though at the same time with a

hint of submission in his eyes. He had waited for her to speak, and at

her words he drew a deep breath.

"The opera?" he repeated a little hoarsely. Then he shrugged his

shoulders. "That old fellow in your--your husband's establishment, Mr.

Mudge, told me that you were to be here to-night, and when I found

after testing the heat-measuring device that it worked all right, I

thought I'd just stroll round here."

"Then you have been successful?"

He smiled with a touch of the egotism she remembered. "You must see it

to judge. You _will_ come and see it?" he demanded quickly.

She looked at him for some time without replying; she could not keep

the delight out of her eyes. Suddenly she plucked her gaze away.

"There's my husband; he doesn't see us. Signal to him, please," she

cried.

When Simon Hart saw Emil St. Ives standing in the snow beside his

wife's carriage, he approached, looking straight at Rachel. At Emil he

scarcely glanced, though when the inventor opened the carriage door for

him, he thanked him with a slight inclination of the head. When he was

seated, Rachel put a hand on his arm.

"Simon, you know Mr. St. Ives, I believe?" she said. Her voice was

unusually soft and she had gone a little pale. "He has come to tell us

that the heat-measurer--the _pyrometer_, I should say," she corrected

herself, "works perfectly."

"Ah it works, does it?" Simon repeated, and he looked coldly at Emil

St. Ives. "I'm delighted to hear it," he added after a moment. "But

I'll see you to-morrow at the factory and will talk over the matter

then."

Rachel leaned in front of her husband impulsively. "I'll come too,"

she said, "for I'm going to claim half the credit of the invention.

And then," she went on, "I want to hear all about your other

work--everything. You know I met your wife one day. Please remember

me to her," she called as the horses started.

"Well I found your pin," Simon said to her, and he handed her the tiny

jewelled ornament.

"I'm glad of that;" then, while she replaced it in her hair, "why

didn't you show more interest in that heat-measuring instrument?" she

asked, looking at him from under her raised arms.

"Why his coming to notify us of the fact that he has succeeded with the

device--if you'll excuse my saying so," with an ironical smile, "struck

me as lacking in dignity, as a childish action, in fact."

"Of course it was childish," she cried, "but he's an inventor. And

just think how hard he's worked to please you," she continued. "He's

been weeks and weeks and rejected ever so many attempts; and when he

told you--you were so lukewarm. 'I'll see you at the factory

to-morrow'--that's what you said to him, just as if he were a little

boy to be pushed aside. It wasn't kind of you," she finished.

A shadow passed over Simon Hart's face. "I think you exaggerate," he

began, speaking in the slow distinct manner that was habitual with him.

"However," he continued, "I'll endeavour to make up for my

_lukewarmness_ to-morrow." He tried to pronounce the word in a jesting

tone, but his whole aspect was serious. In a moment he leaned forward

and taking one of her reluctant hands, breathing heavily, he held it

against his lips.

The principal gift which he had intended for Rachel, he had ordered

from Geneva, and it had arrived during their absence on the wedding

journey. Now immediately on reaching the house, without giving her

time to lay aside her wraps and stopping only to remove his own fur

coat, he conducted her through the sombre hallway to the more

lugubrious drawing-room.

"There, my dear," he said, pointing to a small object on the table,

"that is for you." For he was anxious to bestow the gift as a

peace-offering.

Rachel approached the table, which was constructed of solid mahogany in

a heavy ugly pattern, and took the leather case in her hands.

"Open it, my love," he urged.

She sank down in a chair and opened the case.

It contained a Swiss watch set in the front of a small onyx box

ornamented with garlands of wrought gold. Anything frailer, daintier,

more coquettish than this little time-piece, fit property for a

princess it would be difficult to imagine. It was a triumph of

frivolity, a little bit of elegance in inlaid work and jewels. For

wind the charming plaything and immediately, from beneath a gold shell

on the cover, up sprang a tiny, buoyant bird, with ruby eyes and

mother-of-pearl bill. Turning this way and that with flutterings of

its variegated plumage, it trilled forth a song,--silver, clear,

crystalline.

Grasping Simon's hand, Rachel dropped her head on his arm. And for

some reason she clung to him vehemently and he felt that her whole body

was trembling.

Congratulating himself that their reconciliation was complete, he

caressed her hair. "It's a Swiss novelty," he explained when she

looked up.

He had been leaning over the back of her chair, now he straightened his

shoulders and took the morocco case in his hands.

"I used to know this Gellaine of Geneva," he marked. "He is one of the

cleverest watchmakers in the world. And now, my dear," he added, "if

you'll excuse me, I'll go and prepare myself a toddy; those boxes are

such draughty places."

As he moved to the door Rachel followed him with a glance which seemed

to beseech him not to leave her. Then, when the door had closed on

him, as if she would rid herself of some importunate thought, she

examined the little timepiece. The bird had disappeared from view

beneath the golden shell. Turning the key twice she replaced the box

on the table, and leaning on her elbows, stared at it. But her sight

was turned inward.

The unexpected meeting with Emil had plunged her once more into chaos.

One glance of his eyes and the curtains of her mind rolled upward. One

intense, burning pressure of his hand laid to hers, and she knew life

again in its fulness.

Like a lost thing, from out a prison-house, her soul reviewed its past.

Across the deep, tragic abyss that yawned between Then and Now, she saw

Emil as in the old blissful time at Pemoquod Point. In the effulgence

of his courage, his ardour, his genius, he had been the sun and the

light of her world. Her heart had called him "Master." And she had

matched him for bravery as steel matches steel that has been tempered

by the same heat in the forming.

"Together!" her heart had sung, pointing its flight to the farthest

star of bliss.

And now.

She leaned forward, her head sunk between her outspread fingers, her

gaze riveted on Simon's gift. Intently she watched the wee songster

and listened to its tinkling song.

"The--bird--in--the--box!" She said the words slowly. Then repeated

them; "_The bird in the box_!"

She lifted clenched hands to her throat.

Suddenly, as if crushed by something she had tried to evade, she put

her head down on her arms.

Outside the snow continued to fall. It fell steadily, monotonously, as

if seeking to cover with a white mantle something it were better to

hide.

BOOK III

CHAPTER I

THE HOUSE IN WASHINGTON SQUARE

A rainy night was followed by a rainy morning. Between the looped

curtains of the alcove window the ground of the square could be seen

soggy and wet. The marble of Washington Arch showed dark streaks of

moisture. Rachel leaned an arm on the dining room mantel. The

housekeeper had been complaining of a litter of kittens in the basement

which she could get no one to destroy.

"Bring them in here, Theresa," Rachel ordered peremptorily; then with a

sigh she cast herself in a chair.

The woman disappeared but presently returned bearing in her hands a

basket containing three white and grey kittens. The mother cat, a

handsome sleek animal with a plume-like tail and round golden eyes,

followed at her heels, alternately mewing anxiously and purring

contentedly.

"I didn't know that you were fond of cats, ma'am," murmured the

housekeeper in an ingratiating tone. "I suppose they are all well

enough for those who likes 'em."

Before proceeding to study the kittens, Rachel drew a small flask from

the pocket of her morning-gown. "If there isn't any more whiskey in

the house, Theresa, send out before breakfast and get some at the

nearest drugstore. Then refill this and take it up to Mr. Hart," she

added without looking at the other.

The housekeeper, a tall angular woman--whose flat bust and prominent

shoulder-blades suggested the awful idea that her head was put on the

wrong way--paused on the threshold. The bosom of her gown bristled

with needles and bits of embroidery cotton clung to her black silk

apron. In spite of her unattractive person there was something smart

and pretentious about Theresa. She carried her head, covered with its

glossy hair, as if it were decorated with an aigrette.

"Shall I take up his breakfast at the same time?" she asked, and lifted

eyes of innocence.

"Mr. Hart will come downstairs for breakfast," Rachel answered shortly;

then, sinking on the rug, she began fondling the kittens.

She lifted them out of the basket one at a time, and holding them at a

distance, looked at their faces, which, three-cornered and mottled

light and dark, suggested pansies; at their paws, soft as velvet and

harmless as yet; at their short frisky tails and little red mouths

which they opened wide as they mewed straight at her. During this

pretty play the mother cat sat by the fender and washed her face. But

presently, at an especially distressed mew, she crossed the room and

laid a remonstrative paw on Rachel's arm. But the girl held the kitten

still higher so that the cat was obliged to rear herself on her hind

feet in order to reach it. At that instant Simon Hart entered the room.

"Isn't that rather cruel of you?" he asked, stooping to pat the cat

that arched its back under his hand.

"Let her reach it then," Rachel answered.

After several trials, the mother cat succeeded in taking the kitten by

the nape of its limp neck, and then hopped nimbly with it into the

basket. Rachel looked at her gravely as she began rather roughly to

lick the kittens with her little scarlet tongue, covered with tiny

cones.

Simon extended his hand, but Rachel made no move to rise. Instead,

turning her head which she rested on her palm, she looked at him and

across her face flitted a variety of emotions. He would have assisted

her to her feet, but she would have none of him. Then another glance

and her mood changed completely. Self-contained and enigmatic as he

was on ordinary occasions, he showed now an embarrassment that struck

to her heart. She put up her hands, and with a sudden violence of

emotion, he lifted her in his arms.

A moment later, she had forced him to release her, and, pale and

thoughtful, she left the room.

"We'll have breakfast in a moment," she said, reappearing. "I gave

Theresa your flask; she is sending out," she added in a lower voice.

Already Simon had assumed his usual equivocal and aloof manner. At

these words, he lowered his eyes.

"That was kind of you," he said, "I required merely a drop and I found

what I needed. My cold," he continued, "is no worse; on the contrary,

I shall go to the shop to-day."

Since the night of the opera, three weeks before, Simon had been

confined to the house by his dread enemy, the influenza. During this

illness he had consumed a great quantity of liquor. If he went without

it for any number of hours, he showed the effect. That morning Rachel

had been moved by his pale and wretched look.

During the meal he read to her part of a paper he expected to deliver

before the Jewellers' Association. But she crumbled her bread, her

thoughts wandering. As he was preparing to leave the house, she

lingered about in his vicinity.

"Do you know," she ventured, following him to the door, "I'm not half

satisfied with what you did about Mr. St. Ives?" and she gave him a

direct, almost accusing glance.

"But I sent him a check, certainly liberal in the circumstances, since

he is free to go on and manufacture--" Simon began, and he wrinkled his

brow.

Rachel shrugged her shoulders in impatience. "You sent him a check;

yes, you even advised him to go on and manufacture that instrument.

But he isn't capable of making a practical move. Now if you'd shown

any real interest--" She stayed her words, silenced by contrition.

After Simon had gone, she established herself with a bit of sewing in

the dining room. It was the only room that did not weigh on her

spirits. But she had discovered at once that this house, lonely,

silent, forbidding, suited Simon as it was; therefore she had confined

herself merely to refitting and converting into a sitting room an

unused chamber on the second floor; and to making more comfortable the

quarters of old Nicholas Hart. There her efforts had ended. An entire

remodelling of the mansion would have been necessary to disperse the

atmosphere of depression that, tangible as dampness, emanated from its

walls.

It had sheltered in its time, apparently, a goodly number of

soft-moving, mirthless people. Its inner doors of dark polished wood,

never emitted a squeak; and the occasional sounds that penetrated the

plaster of its ceilings, suggested a company of rats that went about

their business in hushed, apologetic groups, instead of in scampering

hordes. The house had never become reconciled to Simon's pianola, and

when he seated himself before the instrument, as he did with

conscientious regularity every day after dinner, Rachel often fancied

that the house lifted shoulders of aversion.

And the legitimate inmates, she decided, were in keeping with the

house. Simon and his housekeeper, Theresa Walker, could have desired

nothing different in the way of a dwelling. As for old Nicholas and

herself, not to mention the various maids who succeeded one another

rapidly (for Theresa was difficult to suit in the matter of assistants)

they were merely interlopers.

The housekeeper inspired Rachel with a kind of horror. She had somehow

gleaned the knowledge that this woman, with her crafty smile but

undeniable capacity for work, when well launched in middle life, had

seized upon the idea of marrying her cousin, a certain Jeremiah Foggs,

when the cousin's wife, a forlorn, feckless, half-witted creature,

should die. As the wife was little more than a troublesome charge on

Jeremiah's hands and he feared leaving her to herself in their village

home, he always brought her with him on the occasions of his visits to

Theresa. During the premature courting of the hard-grained pair, the

poor daft thing sat by the cheek of the chimney with frightened eyes

and a shaking chin. Rachel had a theory that with kind treatment, her

wits might have returned. But no kindness was ever shown her; on the

contrary, Jeremiah and Theresa waited impatiently for the creeping

disease to make way with her. Meanwhile Theresa employed the time of

waiting to good advantage.

Packed away in a chest in her room was a great quantity of hemstitched

linen, doilies, spreads, embroidered curtains and what not. Indeed, it

was a question whether Theresa's means of attraction did not repose

solely in her needle; for these products of her skill, which she

displayed on every visit of Jeremiah, certainly had a killing effect

upon the fellow, with his bullet head. And Theresa, destitute of every

feminine grace, gave herself airs on her handiwork as if it had been

beauty of person and feature. They were a right curious pair; each

with the same air of eager avidity, as if tormented by a keen desire to

gain something, each with the same oily and ingratiating manner.

Rachel detested Theresa even more than she had detested Nora Gage, and

only consented to retain her because Simon seemed to desire it. In

truth, Theresa worked in this house as smoothly and briskly as a

shuttle in a well-oiled machine.

For a time Rachel pursued her work, but presently her interest flagged

and she dressed herself for the street. She was of two minds. Instead

of going out immediately she ascended to the top story to take a peep

at Nicholas. At her suggestion the old man's workroom was now on the

third floor and it was no longer necessary for him to descend a flight

of steps to his chamber. Also, his meals were all served to him in his

workroom. Without comprehending the cause of his greater comfort, the

old fellow cherished a whimsical and flighty affection for Rachel;

while Simon was humbly grateful to her for this interest in his erratic

parent. Now the only time Nicholas was obliged to attempt the stairs

was when he went for an airing. On certain days of the week, if the

weather were fine, a man nurse appeared and conveyed him to the street

and remained with him in the Square. From these excursions Nicholas

never returned without some token for Rachel. Now it was a cornucopia

of popcorn which he had bought from a vender; later, as the spring

advanced and grass began to show along the paths, it was a cluster of

leaves and buds; not infrequently it happened that he treasured up and

presented to her particularly handsome specimens of insects mounted on

pins.

If truth were told, little and lithe and still spry, this old

reprobate, with his eagerness regarding the habits of the house-fly,

his raptures and his rages, came nearer than any other person in the

house to being keyed to the same pitch as Rachel herself. If rumour

could be trusted, a number of discreditable experiences had made up

Nicholas's life. He had gamed and drunk, driven fast horses, followed

fast women. He had conducted one thriving business after another, and

among them, the car shops that had employed old David. He had made

fortunes with ease and lost them with equal facility. Now, in his last

years, he was penniless and Simon was engaged in patiently paying the

debts Nicholas had contracted; but for this, be it understood, he

received scorn rather than gratitude.

As a result of his evil ways Nicholas, in the early years of his

marriage, had broken his wife's heart. Her patience had annoyed him,

and, had she shown more spirit, her fate might have been a happier one.

As it was, she had slipped out of life, mown down with grief as grass

is mown with the scythe. And Nicholas had made scant pretence of

regretting her, just as he made scant pretence of approving his son.

Simon had early betrayed a lack of zest for life--a trait his father

could ill tolerate. Therefore, with taunts and gibes, he had made

Simon's life miserable through boyhood and early manhood. At first, it

may be, he thought by this method to kindle some spirit in the lad, but

failing to strike a spark--for Simon remained through all pale and

silent, a human riddle to the father,--Nicholas had continued his jeers

for sheer malicious joy in the practice. Even now his wit kindled at

the thought of Simon, and sure of an appreciative listener, he would

make clever satirical remarks about him to his niece, Julia Burgdorf,

whenever she put in an appearance. And Julia would match these

sallies. To this joking Rachel, in a storm of anger, had endeavoured

to put a stop. Now when the pair exchanged their witticisms, it was

out of her hearing.

Though this old man bore not the slightest resemblance to old David,

his age and animation endeared him to Rachel. Then he had once helped

her grandfather, a thing she never forgot.

Now his voice, which leaped constantly to a childish treble, reached

her before she gained the stair's head. A stuttering of the words of

his ditty, decided her to postpone her call. Owing to his excitable

heart and his years, liquor was forbidden the old man. Resolving to

take the housemaid sharply to task for giving Nicholas whiskey, Rachel

descended the stairs. Through delicacy she never spoke to Simon of his

own or his father's failing. When moved to disapproval of her husband,

as she had been that morning, her only reproach was a look. A

childhood passed among fishermen had taught her tolerance for this

particular weakness.

When Simon returned at lunch time, she was nowhere about and he was

forced to sit down to the table without her. But she entered before he

had finished the first course, and taking her place opposite him, began

slowly unfastening her jacket. Wishing to please her, he launched into

a description of St. Ives's _pyrometer_.

"We melt up different alloys to get the different colour effects," he

concluded, "and the colour and intensity of the light bear certain

definite relations--"

Rachel opened her eyes: "Then it's a success, is it?"

Simon avoided her gaze. "Why yes, certainly. In fact," he added,

"it's a very ingenious device. A trifling thing, you understand; but

it is an instrument for which there is a definite need, and for that

reason I should judge he might possibly be able to do something with

it."

Rachel nodded. "I see. Now Simon, I'll tell you what I've done; I've

just been out and sent notes by messenger to Mr. St. Ives and his wife,

and to Emily Short, asking them to come this afternoon and stay to

dinner. Tell me, did I do right?"

Without visible effect Simon had tried to shape her to more

conventional standards. Rachel exhibited as much independence as

before their marriage. Now he replied a little wearily:

"Why of course, though I should have considered that the case scarcely

required anything as complimentary, in a social sense, as an invitation

to dinner."

"And why not?" she flashed back hotly. "Though when it comes to that,

I don't wish to compliment Emil St. Ives; I wish to _help_ him. Heaven

knows, he's egotistic enough. But you don't realize," she pursued in a

softer tone, "how helpless he is. He needs someone to advise him, or

he'll spend himself in a thousand useless ways; someone to take an

intelligent interest in him."

"He has a wife, hasn't he?"

"I said _intelligent_ interest."

"But I assure you, my love," he began, "that I'm by no means the proper

person--"

However, before he left the house he had promised to return earlier

than was his custom in order to further his wife's plan.

In the course of the afternoon Rachel received a note from Emily Short

explaining that she could not be present at the dinner. The note

concluded: "You may remember Betty Holden. I think you were with me

one evening when she came in. Poor child! Fortunately her baby never

drew breath. She's to be taken this afternoon to Bellevue and I've

promised to go with her. I shan't get away early for she's in a great

taking and no wonder. The landlady at the place where she boarded

threatened to put her into the street. Poor soft defenceless things,

besieged both from within and without, there's small chance for the

Betty Holdens." This news at any other time would have stirred Rachel,

but now she had no time for reflection.

Emil and his wife arrived promptly at five o'clock. Enlivened by hope,

Annie was looking especially pretty. She had arrayed herself in a gown

she had so far held in reserve, and had donned her rings which

glistened like dew on her thin fingers. But Rachel gave small heed to

Annie. She had counted on turning her over to Emily, telling herself

that the toy-maker's companionship would benefit the lackadaisical

girl. But now this plan was frustrated. Conducting her guests into

the chamber which she had converted into a sitting room, Rachel

established Annie in a corner and furnished her with several books of

engraving. And thereafter, with undisguised eagerness, she gave her

own attention to Emil.

She had weathered a tempest.

In youth the blood flows warm, and the unexpected meeting with her

former friend when she was off guard, when she was excited by her first

opera, had produced a storm. But the storm had passed, the last gleam

of lightning and rumble of thunder had ceased and the air was clearer

than before. So she was convinced. She denounced herself as an

inflammable creature, and turned with renewed allegiance to her

husband, dwelling desperately on her gratitude and esteem. Finally,

sure of herself and luxuriating in a sense of renewed activity, she

fancied she could serve Emil as simply as she would serve another

friend. Nor did she see in the attempt Love in one of its

multitudinous disguises.

The room, which was long and shadowy, overlooked the Square. She led

the way to a divan under a window and motioned Emil to a place at her

side.

"Now," she said, "I want to know just where you stand with your work?

Tell me what you have done--what you intend doing--all," with an

expansive gesture.

He followed it closely; then glued his eyes to her fingers. For some

reason he was displeased at this abrupt buckling to a subject that

ordinarily would have received his ready endorsement.

"But are there not other things to talk about--first?" he suggested.

"Not of so much importance."

"No?"

"No."

The gentle rebuke only incited his dominating nature: "But I should

like to ask-- For one thing, you know you treated me shamefully,

Rachel, when I left Pemoquod." He dropped his head to a level with

hers. Into his voice had crept the old dangerous and caressing tone.

Amazed at the double temerity of the use of her name and the allusion

to the Past, she returned his look, flushing uncontrollably.

"Why did you do that?" he pursued, enjoying her embarrassment.

"I--I do not recall it," she said and flamed yet more to the lie. "And

hereafter, please remember I am Mrs. Hart."

She had a grip on the reins and he must heed the sharp tug, though he

still chafed under the restraint like a restive horse. "And now we'll

speak of another matter--your work;" she continued.

"It's two years since we've seen each other," he remonstrated sulkily.

"It's nearer three," she might have answered, but checked the words.

Instead, severely: "You ought to have something to show for that length

of time."

"I have something."

"So I supposed. Now tell me."

And gradually with those arts known to woman, she subdued the quondam

lover and roused the genius. Yielding to the flattery of her attitude,

which was one of keen interest in his work, he was soon discoursing

enthusiastically on the subject she had prescribed. A fish in the

water or a bird in the air could not have been more at home than was he

in her presence.

Thus they talked till twilight fell and the maid came in to light the

gas: and they were still deeply absorbed when Simon appeared.

He stood for a space, his face a blur of white in the doorway; then he

came forward into the circle of light.

Instantly three heads were raised, Rachel's and Emil's abstractedly,

Annie's with a distinct expression of relief. She had soon wearied of

the books of engravings with which Rachel had thoughtfully supplied

her, and the volumes were piled on the floor beside her chair; all save

one, which she still held listlessly in her lap. She was pleased at

the interest Mrs. Hart exhibited in her husband's work, for a word

which she caught now and then, had convinced her of the topic of their

conversation, and her jealousy had not been aroused. But she was weary

and she now stood up with a pretty air of welcome for Simon.

He shook hands with her cordially. Then crossing the room, he shook

hands with the inventor.

But Emil scarcely waited to answer his few studied words of greeting;

instead, he settled himself immediately at Rachel's side, and rumpling

his heavy mane with his fingers, he stared dreamily. "The next thing I

completed was the _electrometer_," he said, and Simon noticed that

Rachel wrote the word "electrometer" on a tablet she held on her knees.

He returned to Annie and until dinner was announced, he talked to her

in his low even tones.

Dinner brought the party into no closer harmony. Rachel, with a

carnation blazing in her hair and her dark intelligent eyes speaking

more swiftly than her lips, still talked to Emil; and Simon, concealing

every trace of annoyance if he felt any, devoted himself to Annie.

After the meal, he even proposed playing to her on the pianola, and

Rachel, knowing that he was very fond of performing on the instrument,

allowed him to go through two pieces in his usual faithful uninspired

manner. Then she approached him.

"Come Simon," she said, laying hold of his hands. "You know why I

asked them here," she added in an urgent whisper as he made no move to

rise. "He is the inventor of all these instruments," and she displayed

a list. "But he hasn't the remotest idea what steps to take in order

to get the right people interested. Now can't you give him letters to

different men, Simon? Come--you can think up some plan if you try!"

Simon Hart had not the slightest interest in Alexander Emil St. Ives;

moreover, in general, he was ignorant of the matters upon which the

other required advice. However, he yielded; subsequently he was

influenced to the point of going several times to visit the inventor;

later, he organized The St. Ives and Hart Company of which he himself

was the president. All this he did because of the imperious, and at

the same time, pleading look in a pair of dark clear eyes.

By the end of the year the house in Washington Square had undergone a

change. This change had nothing to do with the renewing of bricks or

mortar, or the altering of any outward feature; materially the

residence remained the same. Never the less, it was now connected with

a certain loft in John Street by a subtle, tenuous web. In this web,

love,--unacknowledged, innocent, strong as death, thrown out from a

woman's heart and returning ever to it,--was the solitary thread.