TABLE of CONTENTS

Tale the First.—A STRANGE IDYL.

Tale the Second.—THE TUBEROSE.

Tale the Third.—SAUCY BETTY MORK.

Tale the Fourth.—JOHN VANTINE.

Tale the Fifth.—MÈRE MARCHETTE.

Tale the Sixth.—BARUM WEST’S EXTRAVAGANZA.

Tale the Seventh.—A SKETCH IN UMBER.

Tale the Eighth.—APRIL’S LADY.

Tale the Ninth.—DELIA GRIMWET.

Tale the First.

A STRANGE IDYL.

AN EPISODE IN MASK.

[Scene:—A balcony opening by a wide, curtained window from a ball-room in which a masquerade is in progress. Two maskers, the lady dressed as a peasant girl of Britany and her companion as a brigand, come out. The curtains fall behind them so that they are hidden from those within.]

He. You waltz divinely, mademoiselle.

She. Thank you. So I have been told before, but I find that it depends entirely upon my partner.

He. You flatter me. Will you sit down?

She. Thank you. How glad one is when a ball is over. It is almost worth enduring it all, just to experience the relief of getting through with it.

He. What a world-weary sentiment for one so young and doubtless so fair.

She. Oh, everybody is young in a mask, and by benefit of the same doubt, I suppose, everybody is fair as well.

He. It were easy in the present case to settle all doubts by dropping the mask.

She. No, thank you. The doubt does not trouble me, so why should I take pains to dispel it? Say I am five hundred; I feel it.

He. What indifference; and in one who waltzes so well, too. Will you not give me another turn?

She. Pardon me. I am tired.

He. And you can resist music with such a sound of the sea in it?

She. It is not melancholy enough for the sea.

He. Is the sea so solemn to you, then?

She. Inexpressibly. It is just that—solemn. It is too sad for anger, and too great and grave for repining; it is as awful as fate.

He. I confess it never struck me so.

She. It did not me always. It was while I was in Britany—where I got this peasant dress; isn’t it quaint?—that I learned to know the sea. It judged me; it reiterated one burden over and over until it seemed to me that I should go mad; yet at the same time its calmness gave me self-control. If there had been the slightest trace of anger or relenting in its accusations, I could have turned away easily enough, and shaken its influence all off. But it was like an awful tribunal before which I had to stand silent, and review my past as interpreted by inexorable justice,—with no palliations, no shams, nothing but honest truth. But why should I say all this rigmarole to you? You must be amused,—if you are not too much bored, that is.

He. On the contrary, I thank you very much.

She. For what?

He. First, for your confidence in me; and second, for telling me an experience so like my own.It was not the sea, but circumstances that delivered me over to myself,—a long, slow convalescence, in which I, too, had an interview with the Nemesis of truth, and found a carefully built structure of shams and self-deception go down as mist before the sun. The most frightful being in the world to encounter is one’s estranged better self.

She. That is true. No one but myself could have persuaded me that it was I who was to blame. The more I was argued with, the more I believed myself a martyr, and my husband—

He. Your husband?

She. I have betrayed myself. I am not mademoiselle, but madame.

He. But I see no—

She. No ring? True; I returned that to my husband before I went to Britany.

He. And in Britany?

She. In Britany I would have given the world to have it back again.

He. But your husband? Did he accept it so easily?

She. What else can a man do when his wife casts him off?

He. Do? Oh, it is considered proper in such cases, I believe, for him to make a violent pretence of not accepting his freedom.

She. You seem to be sure he considered it freedom!

He. Pardon me. I forgot for the moment that you were his wife.

She. Compliments do not please me.

He. Then you are not a woman.

She. Will you be serious?

He. Why should I be—at a ball?

She. Because I choose.

He. Oh, good and sufficient reason!

She. But tell me soberly,—you are a man,—what could my husband have done?

He. Do you mean to make my ideas standards by which to try him?

She. Perhaps yes; perhaps no. At least tell me what you think.

He. A man need not accept a dismissal too easily.

She. But what then?

He. He might have followed; he might have argued. It is scarcely possible that you alone were to blame. Was there nothing in which he might have acknowledged himself wrong,—nothing with which he should reproach himself?

She. How can I tell what took place in his heart? I only know my own. He may have repented somewhat, or he may not. As for following— You do not know my husband. He is just, just, just. It was his one fault, I thought then. It took time for me to appreciate the worth of such a virtue.

He. But what has that to do with following you?

She. ‘She has chosen,’ he would reason. ‘Let the event punish her; it is only right that she should suffer for her own act.’

He. But is his justice never tempered by mercy?

She. The highest mercy is to be just. To palliate is merely to postpone sentence.

He. You are the first woman I ever met who would acknowledge that.

She. Few women, I hope, have been taught by an experience so hard as mine. But how dolefully we are talking. Do say something amusing; we are at a ball.

He. I might give you an epigram for the one with which you served me a moment ago, and retort that to be amusing is to be insincere.

She. Then—for we came to be amused—why are we here?

He. Manifestly because we prize insincerity.

She. You are right. I came to get away from myself. One must do something, and even the dissipations of charity pall after a time.

He. We seem to be in much the same frame of mind, and perhaps cannot do better than to stay where we are, consorting darkly, while the others take pains to amuse themselves. So we get through the evening, that is the main thing.

She. You have forgotten to be as complimentary as you were half an hour since.

He. Have I? And yet the greatest compliment a man can pay a woman is sincerity.

She. If he does not love her, yes.

He. Ah, then you agree with Tom Moore:

“While he lies, his heart is yours;

But oh! you’ve wholly lost the youth,

The instant that he tells you truth!”

She. Perhaps; but it is no matter, since we were not talking of love.

He. But if we were?

She. If we were we should undoubtedly say a great many foolish things and quite as many false ones.

He. You are cynical.

She. Oh, no. Cynicism is like a cravat, very becoming to a man if properly worn, but always setting ill upon a lady.

He. Did you learn that, also, in Britany? It is a country of enlightenment. Would that my wife had gone there.

She. Or her husband!

He. You are keen. Her husband learned bitter truths enough by staying at home. I am evidently your complement; for I had a wedding-ring sent back to me.

She. And why?

He. Why? Why? Who ever knows a woman’s reason! Because I refused, perhaps, to call black white, to say I was pleased by what made me angry; because— No; on the whole, since I am not making love to her, it is hardly worth while to lie to a peasant from Britany, though it is of coursenecessary to sustain the social fictions with people nearer home. It was because the wedding-ring was a fetter that constrained my wife, body and soul; because I was as inflexible as steel. My purposes, my views, my beliefs were the Procrustean bed upon which every act of hers was measured.Voila tout!

She. I understand, I think.

He. Oh, I have learned well enough where the blame lay in the three years since she left me.

She. Three years!

He. Why do you start?

She. It is three years, too, since I—

He. Who are you?

She. It is no matter; my husband is far from here.

He. That is more than I can say of my wife.

She. Where is she, then?

He. Heaven knows; not I. But let that go. Why may we not be useful to each other? Our cases are similar; we are both lonely.

She. And strangers.

He. Acquaintance is not a matter of time, but of temperament. Should we have found it possible to be so frank with one another had we been merely strangers?

She. You are specious.

He. No; only honest.

She. But what—

He. What? Why, friendship. We have foundit possible to be frank in masks; why not out of them?

She. Then you propose a platonic friendship?

He. I want a woman who will be my friend, to whom I can talk freely. There are words a man has no power or wish to say to a man, yet which must be spoken or they fester in his mind.

She. I am, then, to be a safety-valve.

He. Every man must have a woman as a lodestar; you are to be that to me.

She. And your wife?

He. My wife? She voluntarily abandoned me. I haven’t seen her for three years; and surely she ought to cease to count by this time.

She. You are heartless.

He. Heartless?

She. You should be faithful to your lost—

He. Lost fiddlestick!

She. You are very rude!

He. I don’t see—

She. And very disagreeable.

He. But—

She. If you had really loved your wife, you’d always mourn for her, whatever she did.

He. Good Heavens! That is like a woman. A man is expected to bear anything, everything, and if at last he does not come weeping to kiss the hand that smites him, he is heartless, forsooth! Bah! I am not a whipped puppy, thank you.

She. Your love was, perhaps, never distinguished by meekness?

He. I’m afraid not.

She. It might be none the worst for that. The ideal man for whom I am looking will not be too lamblike, even in love.

He. You look for an ideal man, then?

She. As closely as did Diogenes.

He. And your husband?

She. Oh, like your wife, he should, perhaps, begin not to count.

He. Good. We are sworn friends, then, until you find your ideal man.

She. If you will.

He. Then unmask.

She. Is that in the bargain?

He. Of course. Else how should we know each other again?

She. But—

He. Unmask!

She. Very well,—when you do.

He. Now, then. [They unmask.]

She. Philip!

He. Agnes!

She. You knew all the time!

He. Who told you I was here?

She. I didn’t know it.

He. I thought you went to Russia.

She. Well, I didn’t. I hope you feel better! Good night.

He. Wait, Agnes. I—

[There is a moment’s silence, in which they look at each other intently. He takes her hand in both his.]

He. Agnes, I am not your ideal man, but—

She. Nor I your ideal woman, apparently. Your wife does not count, you say.

He. No more than your husband; so we are quits there.

She. It’s very horrid of you to remind me of that.

He. I acknowledge that I was always very horrid in everything.

She. Oh, if you acknowledge that, Phil, it is hardly worth while to spend any more time in explanations while this divine waltz is running to waste.

He. But you were tired and out of sorts.

She. You old goose, don’t you see that I’m neither!

He. And you do waltz divinely.

[They attempt to adjust their masks, but somehow get into each other’s arms. In a few moments more, however, they are seen among the dancers within.]

Tale the Second.

THE TUBEROSE.

AN EVENING AT WHIST.

[The scene is the parlor of a modern house, much adorned, and furnished with a wealth of bric-a-brac, which renders getting about a most difficult and delicate operation, unless one is wholly regardless of the consequences to the innumerable ornaments. Mrs. Greeleigh Vaughn, a corpulent and well-preserved widow, who passes for forty, and is not less, has just seated herself at the whist-table, with her daughter and two guests. One of these, Mr. Amptill Talbot, is one of those young men whose wits seem to be in some mysterious fashion closely connected with the parting of their hair exactly in the middle; the other is a handsome and keen-eyed gentleman of middle age, who answers to the name Colonel Graham.]

Mrs. Vaughn. I am so glad you could and would come, Colonel Graham. Now we shall have a delightful evening at whist. You are such a superb player that I am sure I shall learn more about the game by playing with you a single evening than I should by studying the books for a year.

Colonel Graham. You are too good. I make not the slightest pretence of—

Mrs. V. Oh, of course not. You are too modest; but everybody says that you are a wonderful player. I only hope you won’t be too hard on me if I make a mistake.

Miss Vaughn. Oh, I am so glad mamma is your partner, Colonel Graham. I should be frightened to death if I had to play with you. Mr. Talbot will be a good deal more merciful, I am sure.

Mr. Talbot. Anything you do is sure to be right, Miss Vaughn. If you can put up with me, I am sure I can afford to overlook any mistakes you make. I play whist so seldom that I am all out of practice.

Miss V. (dealing). Oh, I just never play, only when I have to make up the table. I have so many things on hand. Why weren’t you at the Wentworths’ last night, Mr. Talbot?

Mr. T. I was out of town. I think you gave yourself two cards that time.

Miss V. Oh, dear! Have I made a misdeal? I wish you’d count your cards.

Colonel G. You are right. The next card is mine.

Miss V. Thank you.

Mrs. V. That came out all right.

Colonel G. But the trump is not turned.

Miss V. Oh, which was the last card? I am sure I don’t know; I’ve got them all mixed up now.

Mrs. V. Well, never mind. Let me draw one. That will do just as well.

Mr. T. Diamonds? Can’t you draw again? I haven’t—

Miss V. I don’t think it was diamonds. I am almost sure it was spades.

Mrs. V. No, diamonds suits me, and of course you can’t change it now; can she, Colonel Graham?

Colonel G. It isn’t customary, I believe, unless we are to play Auction Pitch, and bid for the trump.

Miss V. Oh, now you are going to be sarcastic! I don’t think that’s fair.

Mrs. V. Do you put your trumps at one end of your hand, Colonel Graham?

Colonel G. No, I do not, but some people find it a convenience.

Mr. T. Is it my lead?

Colonel G. No, it is my partner’s.

Mrs. V. Oh, is it my lead? I’m sure I don’t know what to play. You always lead from your long suit, don’t you? There, I hope that queen will be good.

Mr. T. No, it won’t, for I have the ace.

Mrs. V. Oh, you mean man! Partner, can’t you trump that?

Colonel G. I have suit.

Miss V. There, I have got to put the king on, and I think it is mean.

Mr. T. I am awfully sorry. If I’d only known—

Miss V. I shook my head at you, but you wouldn’t look up.

Mrs. V. That wasn’t fair, and you deserve to be beaten. Now my jack is good, any way.

Mr. T. It isn’t your lead. I took the trick.

Mrs. V. Oh, I beg pardon.

Miss V. I would have trumped it, any way.

Mr. T. I wish I knew what you have.

Miss V. I wish I could tell you. Don’t make it too dark.

Mr. T. Then I’ll lead diamonds.

Miss V. That’s just right.

Mrs. V. Diamonds are trumps.

Miss V. Oh, are they? Oh, that’s too bad. I didn’t want trumps led.

Mr. T. But you said— Why, can’t you go over Colonel Graham’s nine-spot?

Miss V. I made a mistake. I meant to play the ten.

Mrs. V. Shall I put on a small one or a high one, Colonel Graham?

Colonel G. The trick is ours as it lies.

Mrs. V. Then if I put on a high one it will get it out of the way, so you’ll know what to do next time.

Mr. T. Why, you’ve thrown away the king of trumps!

Mrs. V. Wasn’t that right?

Miss V. Why, of course not, mamma. You ought to have put on either the ace or a low one.

Colonel G. It is your lead, Mrs. Vaughn.

Mrs. V. She says she’ll trump hearts, and I can’t play my knave. I’ll try spades. I hope you’ll take it.

Mr. T. And he did. How nice to have a partner do just what you tell him to.

Miss V. That means that I don’t.

Mr. T. You are always satisfactory, whatever you do.

Miss V. What was led? Clubs? Are clubs trumps?

Colonel G. No; diamonds.

Miss V. Second hand low. I know that, at any rate, so there’s a two-spot.

Mr. T. Your mother has taken it with the seven.

Miss V. Oh, and I had the ace, king, and queen. Ought I to have played one of those?

Colonel G. If you tell us your hand you must expect us to play to it.

Miss V. I didn’t mean to tell.

Mrs. V. (leading spades). That was your suit, wasn’t it?

Mr. T. But I hold the ace.

Miss V. It was your own lead, mamma. Any way, I’ll trump it.

Mr. T. Why, you’ve trumped my ace.

Miss V. Oh, did I? I didn’t mean to. Can’t I take it back?

Colonel G. It is a little late, but still—

Miss V. Oh, well, never mind. Let it go. I have the king, any way (leading it).

Colonel G. But you just trumped a spade.

Mrs. V. A revoke! That gives us three points.

Miss V. Oh, it doesn’t either! I didn’t see that king at all when I trumped, and that was theonly spade I had. I’ll change it on the last trick, and then it will be all right.

Mrs. V. You can’t do that; can she, Colonel Graham?

Colonel G. It isn’t customary.

Mr. T. Oh, who wants to play the stiff club rules? I don’t; there isn’t any fun in whist if you are going to be so particular.

Miss V. Whose lead is it now?

Colonel G. If it isn’t yours it must be Mr. Talbot’s, as you decide about that trick.

Mr. T. Then I’ll lead a spade, and you can trump it.

Miss V. There, that’s better than having that trump wasted on your ace.

Mrs. V. Did you ever play Stop? We played it last summer at Bar Harbor. It’s a Western game, and you have chips, just like poker; and then you stop it if you have the stop cards; and sometimes you’ll have the meanest little cards left in your hands, and if it is the ace of diamonds you have to pay five chips for it, or the king, or the queen, or the knave, or the ten; not so much, of course, but it all counts up awfully fast.

Mr. T. Why, that is ever so much like Sixty-six. Do you remember the time we tried to play Sixty-six on the Bar Harbor boat, Miss Vaughn?

Miss V. Oh, yes; and Ethel Mott was such fun. She just would cheat, and there was no stopping her.

Colonel G. It is your lead, Miss Vaughn.

Mrs. V. Oh, just wait a moment. I want to know if fourth best has anything to do with playing fourth hand?

Colonel G. Nothing whatever.

Mr. T. Oh, fourth best is one of those things they’ve put in to make whist scientific. For my part, I don’t think there’s any fun—

Miss V. That’s just what I say. When I play whist I want to have a good time, and not feel as if I were going through an examination at a scientific school. Oh, did you know we are going to have a whist figure at Janet Graham’s german, Mr. Talbot? Won’t that be fun?

Mr. T. I am sure then that you’ll be trump.

Miss V. Thank you.

Mrs. V. How pretty!

Colonel G. It is your lead, Miss Vaughn.

Miss V. Why, did I take the last trick? What shall I—oh, I know,—the ace of clubs.

Mrs. V. The two-spot of diamonds ought to be good for that.

Miss V. How horrid! Now the rest of my clubs aren’t any good. Well, any way, I can throw them away.

Mrs. V. Have hearts been led?

Mr. T. I’m sure I can’t remember.

Miss V. (examining tricks). Yes, here’s one heart trick.

Mrs. V. Well, I must lead it, and I’m sure Idon’t remember about it at all. I’ll lead a small one. Was that right, Colonel Graham?

Colonel G. You might have led your knave.

Mrs. V. Why, how did you know I had the knave. I declare, it’s like witchcraft, the way you keep run of the cards. I suppose you know where every card is. Who took that?

Colonel G. I did.

Mr. T. I ought to have trumped that, but I do hate to trump second hand.

Colonel G. But you played suit.

Mr. T. So I did. I forgot that.

Colonel G. (showing hand). The rest of the tricks are mine.

Miss V. Why, I have the king and queen of clubs, and you haven’t a club in your hand.

Colonel G. That is why the tricks are mine. I can keep the lead to the end. I am very sorry, Mrs. Vaughn; but I am suddenly attacked with a nervous headache, so that I cannot possibly go on playing. I shall have to ask to be excused.

Mrs. V. Oh, don’t break up the game when we are getting along so well.

Colonel G. I am very sorry; but I must go. I have enjoyed the game extremely.

Mr. T. Are you out?

Colonel G. Yes.

Mrs. V. I’m sure it was all owing to you.

Colonel G. It was all owing to the fall of the cards. I haven’t done anything.

Miss V. I’m sure we didn’t have anything on our side at all. I hate whist anyway; you have to be so quiet, and study on it so.

Mr. T. Yes, I think it’s awfully hard work.

Colonel G. Oh, you’ll have better luck next time. Good-by; don’t rise.

[And the Colonel goes to the club to relieve his mind by a quantity of vigorous expletives, and then to settle down to an evening of what he calls real whist.]

Tale the Third.

SAUCY BETTY MORK.

MRS. FRUFFLES IS AT HOME.

In answer to the announcement that Mrs. Stephen Morgan Fruffles will, on the afternoon of January 27, be at home from four to seven, all the world—with the exception of her husband, who keeps significantly out of the house, and at his club finds such solace as is possible under the circumstances—has assembled to celebrate that rare and exciting event.

The parlors are thronged almost to suffocation; the air is warm, and laden with a hundred odors, which combine to make it well-nigh unbreathable; the constant babble of conversation goes on with the steady click-clack of a mill-wheel, and several hundred people persistently talk without saying anything whatever.

Mrs. Chumley Jones is there, in a most effective, costume of garnet plush, adorned with some sort of long-haired black fur. She is conscious of being perfectly well dressed, of being the best-known woman in the parlors, and most of all is she now, as always, conscious of being the one and only Mrs. Chumley Jones. Soothed and sustained by an unfaltering trust in all these good things, she moves slowly through the rooms, or stands at some convenient coign of vantage, dropping a word to this one and to that, with just the right differences of manner fitted to the degrees of the people whom she addresses.

“My dear Mrs. Fruffles,” she remarks to the hostess, “you do always have such enchanting receptions!”

“Oh, thank you, dear Mrs. Jones,” responds the other, fully aware what is expected of her; “I wish I could begin to have anything so charming as your Fridays.”

“Oh, so kind of you to say so,” murmurs Mrs. Jones, with the expressive shake of the head proper to the sentiment and the occasion.

Then she passes on to her duty elsewhere.

“How do you do, Mrs. Jones?” the voice of Ferdinand Maunder says at her side. “Isn’t it a lovely day? It is really like a Roman winter; don’t you think so?”

“Yes, it really is, Mr. Maunder.”

“Yes, that’s what I’ve been saying to myself all day.”

“It is so much nicer of you to say it to me.”

“Oh, Mrs. Jones, you are always so clever at turning things.”

They smile at each other with perfect and well-bred inanity for a second, and then Fred Lasceet slips in between them.

“How do you do, Mrs. Jones?”

“Oh, how do you do, Mr. Lasceet? It is ever so long since I have seen you.”

“So good of you to think it long. I am sure it seems an age to me.”

Mr. Maunder having meanwhile glided through the crowd with an eel-like elusiveness, Mrs. Chumley Jones is left with a remark upon which to form her conversation for the afternoon.

“We have had such a strange winter; don’t you think so, Mr. Lasceet? It is really like a Roman winter.”

“It really is; though I shouldn’t have thought of it. You are always so clever in thinking of things, Mrs. Jones.”

“You are a sad flatterer, Mr. Lasceet.”

Mr. Lasceet endeavors to look very sly and cunning, and while he gives his mind to this endeavor another slips into his place.

“How do you do, Mrs. Jones?” says Percival Drummond.

“Oh, how do you do, Mr. Drummond? I haven’t seen you for ever so long.”

Mr. Lasceet melts into the swaying background, and is seen no more.

“It really is not nice of you to say so, Mrs. Jones,” is Mr. Drummond’s response, “when I took you in to dinner at Mrs. Tiger’s night before last.”

“Oh, dear me; how stupid of me! I really fear I am losing my mind. It is the weather, I think. It is so like a Roman winter, don’t you think?”

“Yes, it is a little.”

“Oh, ever so much. How do you do, dear Mrs. Gray? I am delighted to see you. I was just saying to Mr. Drummond that it seems to me that our winter this year is so much like a Roman winter. Did you ever think of it?”

“Oh, my dear, I have thought of nothing else all winter. Why, it is just such a day as it was one afternoon two years ago when I was in Rome.”

“Were you in Rome year before last?” Mr. Drummond inquires, with the air of one to whom the answer of the question is of the most vital importance, although he asks only for the sake of being silent no longer.

“Yes, we went in October and stayed until March. You remember, Mrs. Jones, that we dined with you the very day before we sailed.”

“Why, yes, so you did. I had forgotten all about it. Are you going?”

“Yes, I really must go. I have three places more to call before I go home, and we are going out to dinner.”

“I shall see you if you dine at the Muchmen’s.”

“Oh, are you to be there? How lovely.”

“I hope to take one of you in,” Mr. Drummond says, with a smile of the most brilliant vacuity.

“Are you to be there, too? Why, it will be quite a reunion. Au revoir.”

The crowd swallows Mrs. Gray, and at the samemoment Mr. Drummond is seized upon by a sharp-looking elderly female, who drags him off as if she were conveying him into some sly corner where she may devour him undisturbed. Mrs. Jones turns to move toward the other parlor.

At that moment she is accosted by a lady of an appearance so airy, both as regards dress and manner, as to suggest that she is a mislaid member of some ballet troupe.

“Why, how do you do?” she cried, with a vivacity quite in keeping with her appearance.“My dear Mrs. Jones, I haven’t seen you since I got back from Europe.”

“Why, Susie Throgmorton, is it really you? I didn’t know you were home.”

“That shows what an unimportant person I am.”

“Oh, I knew you came home from Europe, but I thought you were still in New York.”

“Oh, I only went on to see Aunt Dinah for a couple of days. I got caught in the most awful storm you ever saw.”

“But the winter,” Mrs. Chumley Jones observes, with an air of freshness and conviction which is something beautiful to see, “has been as mild as a Roman winter most of the time.”

“Yes, it has been like a Roman winter.”

The crowd separates them and they go their several ways, each repeating that it is like a Roman winter; but meanwhile the same observation isbeing scattered broadcast by Mr. Maunder, Mr. Lasceet, and Mr. Drummond, so that, although there are a good many people in the room, they are in a fair way of being all informed that the winter strongly resembles that of Rome; a statement which, if true, may be regarded as of the highest importance.

It is not until, entering the tea room, Mrs. Chumley Jones encounters Mrs. Quagget, who talks more rapidly than any other known woman, that she has anybody take the words out of her mouth; but before she can tell Mrs. Quagget that it is like a Roman winter, Mrs. Quagget has imparted that interesting information to her. It is all one, however, since something has been said by one of them; and Mrs. Chumley Jones is not in the least disconcerted. She still clings to the convenient remark, as she did not take the trouble to bring one with her, and this one suits her purpose admirably.

“My dear Miss Tarrart,” she exclaims, as she comes upon a wintry young lady of advanced stages of maturity, “how do you do? I haven’t seen you for an age.”

“Why, how do you do, Mrs. Jones?” is the response, delivered in a manner so emphatic as to convey the impression that the reason why Miss Tarrart is so odd-looking is because she has put so much energy into her greetings of her friends.“I am enchanted to see you. When do you goabroad? I am sure one might almost think they were abroad in this weather. It is so—”

“Yes,” Mrs. Jones interposes, taking the words out of her mouth; “I was just saying to Mrs. Quagget that this is really quite like a Roman winter; don’t you think so?”

“Yes, it is,” Miss Tarrart answers, with the air of one who has been beaten by unfair means. “It is like a Roman winter.”

“Why don’t you come and see me, Miss Tarrart? It really is not kind of you to stay away so long.”

“I am coming very soon; and you must come and see me.”

“Oh, yes; I am coming. Do you know which way Mrs. Fruffles is? I really must go.”

“She is in the other room.”

“Well, good-bye, dear.”

“Good-bye.”

The two separate, each thinking how fast the other is growing old. Mrs. Chumley Jones, feeling that she has now done her whole duty, does not even take the trouble any more to tell people that the winter is like a Roman one. She merely makes her way to the hostess.

“Good-bye,” she says. “One always has such lovely times at your house, Mrs. Fruffles.”

“Oh, it is so kind of you to say so, when your Fridays are so much pleasanter.”

“It is so kind of you to say so, my dear Mrs.Fruffles; but I am sorry to say that I cannot agree with you.”

“It is the weather partly,” the hostess observes;“so many people have said to me this afternoon that it seems like a Roman winter.”

“Yes, I was just thinking of that very thing. Well, good-bye, my dear. Be sure and come in on Friday.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

And as far as Mrs. Chumley Jones is concerned, Mrs. Stephen Morgan Fruffles ceases to be “At Home.”

Tale the Fourth.

JOHN VANTINE.

THE RADIATOR.

A STUDY IN THE MODERN STYLE OF COLLOQUIAL FICTION.

[Scene, the chamber of Mr. and Mrs. Ellston, in an apartment hotel. Time, three A. M. The silence of the night is unbroken, save by the regular breathing of the sleepers, until suddenly, from the steam radiator, bursts a sound like the discharge of a battery of forty-pound guns.]

Mrs. E. (springing up in bed) Oh! eh? what is that?

[Her husband moves uneasily in his sleep, but does not reply. The noise of the sledge-hammer score of the “Anvil Chorus” rings out from the radiator.]

Mrs. E. George! George! Something is going to happen! Do wake up, or we shall be murdered in our sleep!

Mr. E. (with mingled ferocity and amusement) There is small danger of anybody’s being murdered in his sleep, my dear, where you are. It’s only that confounded radiator; it’s always making some sort of an infernal tumult. It can’t do any harm.

Mrs. E. But it will wake baby.

Mr. E. Well, if it does, the nurse can get him to sleep again, I suppose.

[From the room adjoining is heard a clattering din, as if all the kettles and pans in the house were being thrown violently across the floor.]

Mrs. E. There! The nursery radiator has begun. I must go and get baby.

Mr. E. Let baby alone. If the youngster will sleep, for heaven’s sake let him. The steam-pipes make noise enough for this time of night, one would think, without your taking the trouble to wake baby.

Mrs. E. (with volumes of reproach in her tone) Your own little baby! You never loved him as his mother does.

[The disturbances now assume the likeness to a thoroughly inebriated drum corps practising upon sheet-iron air-tight stoves.]

Mr. E. Of all unendurable rackets—

[A sudden and sharp boom interrupts him. Mrs. Ellston screams, while her husband indulges in language which, although somewhat inexcusably forcible, is yet to be regarded as not unnatural under the circumstances.]

Mrs. E. Oh, George, don’t swear. It always seems so much worse to swear in danger; like tempting Providence; and I know there’s going to be an explosion!

Mr. E. (severely) Don’t talk nonsense! The engineer has gone to sleep and left the drafts open, that’s all. Don’t be so absurd.

[There is another fusillade from the radiator, reinforced by the reverberations from the nursery, wherea regiment of artillery seem to have begun target practice.]

Mrs. E. I will go and get my baby! I know— Oh, George, just hear it crash! Do get up and put the screen in front of it; that may turn off the pieces so they won’t come this way.

Mr. E. (scornfully) Pieces of what? Noise?

Mrs. E. How can you make fun? If the engineer has gone to sleep, he’s sure to blow up the whole hotel. I’m going to get up and dress myself, and take baby over to mother’s!

Mr. E. (with calm but cutting irony) At three o’clock in the morning? Shall you walk, or call a carriage?

Mrs. E. (beginning to sob in a dry and perfunctory fashion) Oh, you are too cruel! You are perfectly heartless. I wonder you don’t take that dear little innocent baby and hold him between you and the radiator for a shield.

Mr. E. That might be a good scheme, my dear, only the little beggar would probably howl so that I haven’t really the moral courage to wake him.

[The indignant reply of Mrs. Ellston is lost in the confused sound of the brays of a drove of brazen donkeys, which appear to be disporting themselves in the radiator. The noise of mighty rushing waters, the clanking of chains, the din of a political convention, the characteristic disturbances of a hundred factories and machine-shops, with the deafening whirr of all the elevated railways in the universe follow in turn.]

Mrs. E. I will go and get my baby, and I willgo to mother’s; and, what is more, we will never, never come back!

Mr. E. Oh, just as you please about going, my dear; only you know that if you desert my bed and board, the law gives the boy to me.

Mrs. E. I don’t believe it’s any such thing; and if it is, it is because men made the law. Women wouldn’t take a baby away from its mother.

Mr. E. Have what theories you choose, my dear; only please let me get a few crumbs of sleep, now the radiator has had the mercy to subside.

Mrs. E. You are a brute, and I won’t ever speak to you again!

[She firmly assumes a stony silence, and the radiator, after a few concluding ejaculations and metallic objurgations, also relapses into comparative stillness. Mr. Ellston’s breathing begins to give strong indications that slumber has re-descended upon his weary frame.]

Mrs. E. (starting up with the inspiration of an entirely new and startling idea) George! George! George!

Mr. E. (with less good humor than might be desired) Eh?

Mrs. E. Wasn’t it wonderful for baby to sleep through it all?

Mr. E. (drowsily) Yes; droll little beggar. His mother wasn’t in the nursery to wake him, though.

Mrs. E. You don’t suppose there is anything the matter with him? George! George, I say! you don’t suppose the reason he sleeps so soundly is because he’s sick?

[To this conundrum Mr. Ellston offers no solution, and equally passes in silence queries in regard to the probability of the nurse’s being awake, alive, well-disposed, and able to take care of baby in case of emergency. Mrs. Ellston sighs with the desperation of long-suffering anguish, and once more stillness reigns in the chamber. The lady again arouses herself, however, from an apparently sound nap to ask, in penetrating tones,—]

“George, do you think it will begin all over again?”

(To which her brutal worser half grumbles out the reply) “No! and that’s where it is more endurable than a woman.”

[At which the radiator gives a chuckle so apt as to suggest the possession of a sinister consciousness on the part of that noisy instrument of torture. Mrs. Ellston groans, with the discouraged conviction that she is but one against two, and upon this theory at length consents to resume her interrupted slumbers.]

Tale the Fifth.

MÈRE MARCHETTE.

“SUCH SWEET SORROW.”

Parting is such sweet sorrow.

Romeo and Juliet, ii. 2.

[A drawing-room. Fanny Motley, who has been making a long call upon her bosom friend, Alice Langley, has at last risen to go.]

Alice. Oh, don’t go yet. I haven’t told you half the things I wanted to.

Fanny. Oh, I must go. I’ve got to go home to dress for Mrs. Fresco’s dinner. Do you suppose Jack will be there?

A. He told me he was going.

F. Oh, I do hope he won’t fail. I do so want to joke him about his sleigh-ride with Ella. Do you suppose she wore her hat with the orange plumes? It’s awfully unbecoming to her. It makes her look just salmon color.

A. She always had perfectly hideous taste. Do you remember that dowdy gown of green plush and mauve tulle she wore to Kate West’s german? It was a perfect dream of horror.

F. Yes; didn’t she look per-fectly hideous? Well (moving toward the door), come and see me just as soon as you can.

A. I’ll come in to-morrow before sewing-circle, if I can, to hear about the dinner. Don’t be too hard on Jack. You know he’s aw-fully thin-skinned.

F. Oh, I won’t be hard on him.

A. (pausing as they reach the door) Is that the boa you had Christmas?

F. Yes; isn’t it lovely? But I told mamma I knew she got it because she knew I’d got to have one, and she’d got to give me something.

A. How mean of you!

F. Oh, she didn’t mind. She’s used to it. Be sure and come in to-morrow.

A. Yes, I will. Oh, did I tell you that Tom Jones has invited Sophia Weston to go to the opera Saturday night?

F. You don’t mean it. Has he, really?

A. Yes; Ethel Mott told me this morning.

F. Do you suppose he is in earnest, after all?

A. Oh, there’s no telling about him. Frank says they bet about it at the club.

F. About him and Sophia?

A. Yes; whether he’ll propose before Lent.

F. How per-fectly horrid! Men are the worst creatures. I declare, I think those dreadful clubs ought to be suppressed.

A. So do I. They do say the most outrageous things. I don’t see how they can sit and listen to them.

F. I don’t, either.

A. And they talk over all the scandals.

F. Yes, it is simply diabolical. How perfectly sweet it is to have a brother who will tell you all about it.

A. Isn’t it? It is almost as good as going myself.

F. Will never tells me a single thing (moving on into the hall). Well, be sure you come, and come as early as you can. Good-bye. (Kisses her.)

A. Good-bye. That boa is just as becoming as it can be.

F. Do you think so? Clara Martin’s makes her look as if she hadn’t any neck at all.

A. Oh, you can wear anything.

F. Thank you, dear. But then you can afford to say so, because you can wear anything yourself. Would you ask Jack about the orange feathers?

A. Oh, he wouldn’t know. Men never know what girls have on,—except Clarence Key, and he’s a perfect man-milliner. Did I tell you what he said to Kate West at the Westons’ tea? I’d have scratched his eyes out.

F. No; what in the world did he say?

A. You won’t repeat it? Because I told Kate I wouldn’t tell. She was so furious she had to tell somebody.

F. I’ll never tell. What was it?

A. You know that tailor-made gown she wears? The one made of gray corduroy? Well, ClarenceKey asked her if she got it so her husband could have it made into riding trousers, after she was done with it. Did you ever hear such impertinence?

F. He didn’t really!

A. He really did!

F. Why, Alice! I should think she’d have killed him. I would.

A. So would I.

F. (putting her hand on the handle of the door) Well, good-bye. Give my love to Blanche when you write.

A. Yes, I will.

F. I shall see you to-morrow?

A. Yes. Good-bye.

[Fanny opens the door, and a blast of cold wind rushes in.]

F. Ugh! How awfully cold it is. I wish I had taken the carriage.

A. I went over to Ethel Mott’s this morning, and I thought I should freeze to death.

F. I hope I sha’n’t get pneumonia or anything. I want to go to the Claytons’ ball.

A. Oh, do tell me; what are you going to wear?

F. (returning and closing the door) There, that is one thing I wanted to ask you about. I want you to go in white, and I’ll wear that black lace I had made in New York last winter. I’ve never worn it here at all, and that’s the most stylish gown I ever had in my whole life.

A. Wouldn’t that be striking? We could go in together. I’ll have a new white tulle, and wear my pearls. I’ll make Aunt Alicia lend me hers, too.

F. That will be too lovely.

A. And you’ll wear diamonds?

F. Oh, no. I wore jet in New York. Not a single thing but black about me; not even my fan-sticks.

A. How per-fectly enchanting!

F. Will you do it?

A. Of course I will. I’ll buy the stuff to-morrow.

F. We’ll talk about it when you come to-morrow. (Opening the door.) I must go this very moment, or I shall never get to Mrs. Fresco’s.

A. What are you going to wear to-night?

F. That cardinal I showed you the other day.

A. Isn’t that rather gorgeous?

F. Oh, it’s going to be a big dinner, you know; and there’s lots of black lace on it.

A. It must be awfully becoming.

F. It is. If Jack knows anything, he ought to see a difference between that and orange plumes.

A. Ethel Mott told me— Oh, do come in a moment. I’m simply freezing to death, and I must tell you this.

F. (once more coming in and closing the door) Well, do be quick. I ought to have been home long ago.

A. Oh, you’ve lots of time.

F. But it takes so long to do my hair.

A. How are you going to wear it?

F. The same old way. I wish somebody’d invent some new style,—something real nice and becoming. I asked Uncle Calvin the other night if he hadn’t seen some pretty styles in China, and I wish you could have seen the pictures he brought out!

A. What were they like?

F. Like? They weren’t like anything. Why, I just gasped over them! Ships, and butterflies, and all sorts of things; all made out of hair, right on your own head.

A. Not really?

F. Yes, just as I tell you. I never saw anything so frightful.

A. It must have been perfectly ghastly!

F. Well, good-bye. Come early. Oh! what were you going to tell me?

A. To tell you?

F. Yes,—that Ethel Mott said.

A. Oh, she said that Kate West has been corresponding all winter with that West Point cadet she met at Newport last summer.

F. No!

A. Yes!

F. Why, Alice Langley, do you mean it?

A. Ethel said she knew it.

F. I don’t believe it.

A. That’s what I said.

F. But she’s as good as engaged to George Maynard.

A. I know it.

F. I think it’s perfectly awful.

A. So do I.

F. Do you suppose he knows it?

A. Oh, no. He’s so gone on Kate, he thinks she’d never look at anybody but him.

F. I never heard anything so perfectly amazing in my life.

A. And sometimes, Ethel says, they write each other two letters a week.

F. Two letters?

A. Two letters.

F. In one week?

A. That’s what Ethel says.

F. I wonder she doesn’t expect the ground to open and swallow her. I never heard of such deceit. Why, she’s going to lead the german with George at the Wentworths’ next week.

A. I know it.

F. Well, I’ve always said Kate West couldn’t be trusted out of your sight. (She turns, and opens the door.) I do believe that every time I open that door it is colder. I know I shall die before I get home,—or freeze my ears.

A. Think how dreadful it would be to freeze your ears. I knew a girl at boarding-school that froze her ears skating one vacation, and they hungdown like rags. We used to tell her they were like a spaniel’s, and call her Fido. She’d get perfectly furious.

F. I don’t wonder.

A. It was awfully good fun to see how she tried to pretend she didn’t care; and then, when she couldn’t stand it another minute, she’d catch up the very first thing she could lay her hands on, and throw it.

F. (descending the steps) I would if I’d been she. Could she wear ear-rings?

A. Oh, not for the longest time,—as much as a year, any way. When we wanted to be especially pleasant, we told her that frozen ears always came off after a time.

F. How horrid!

A. But it was such fun!

F. Good-bye. Be sure and come to-morrow.

A. Yes.

F. And come early.

A. Yes; I’ll come right after luncheon.

F. Don’t you think your gown ought to be made just like my black one?

A. Yes; that would be more effective.

F. And then we can wear our hair just alike.

A. It’s a pity you couldn’t have some black flowers.

F. Yes. I don’t see why the florists don’t get up some. Phew! It’s as cold as Greenland. Do go in. You’ll get your death cold.

A. Good-bye. Don’t tell what I told you.

F. No; not to a soul. How did Ethel Mott find out about the letters?

A. She wouldn’t tell.

F. Do you suppose she really knew, or only guessed?

A. She said she really and truly knew.

F. Isn’t it amazing?

A. It is per-fectly incomprehensible.

E. Well, good-bye. I hope you’ll have good luck at the Whist Club to-night.

A. Oh, do come back till I tell you what Mr. Fremont said about the Whist Club.

[Fanny returns to the foot of the steps, and Alice goes half way down to meet her.]

A. He said he wasn’t going to the Whist Club any more, and I asked him why not, and he said he was tired of taking girls down to feed, when they’d been talking so all the evening that he couldn’t play.

F. Why, I never heard anything so insulting!

A. I told Mr. Van Bruch, and he said the trouble was that Mr. Fremont wanted all the time to feed himself.

F. Good. Do you know Colonel Graham says that he went to the Vaughns’ to play whist, and they held a conversazione instead. Wasn’t that clever?

A. Yes; awfully.

F. Good-bye. I’ll tell Jane to lay out my black dress, so it will be all ready when you come.

A. I’ll try and get time to go down town in the morning, to see what I can get to make my gown of. It’s an awful shame you had to hurry away so; I had lots of things to say.

F. Well, I really had to go, you know. You can’t keep a dinner party waiting, of course.

A. Oh, of course not. Good-bye. I’m awfully glad you came.

F. Good-bye. I’ve had a lovely time.

[She at last really goes, and Alice, after lingering a second to regret the things she has not said, retires and closes the door of the now pretty well aired house.]

Tale the Sixth.

BARUM WEST’S EXTRAVAGANZA.

A BUSINESS MEETING.

[Certain absurd, not to say malicious, reports having been circulated in regard to the meeting held by the Rosedale Sewing-Circle to decide upon the time, place, and other details of their annual spring fair, it is deemed but simple justice to the estimable ladies who compose that body to give an accurate and unvarnished account of the proceedings on that occasion; and the writer feels that not only will such a narration sufficiently silence all slanders, but that it will as well go far toward a triumphant refutation of the often-repeated falsehood that women have no aptitude for business.]

The meeting, being appointed for 2.30 P. M., was called to order by the president, Mrs. Gilflora Smithe, at 3.30 P. M., the hour preceding having been spent in an animated and pleasant discussion of the important question whether the pastor’s wife, who was detained at home by illness, was really so extravagant as to use granulated sugar in her sweet pickles, as was positively asserted by Miss Araminta Sharp. The secretary read the report of the last meeting, as follows:—

“Monday, April 7.—Meeting called to order by the president. The records read and approved. There being no quorum present, it was unanimouslyvoted to hold the next meeting on Thursday, as that day is more convenient for the ladies. On motion of Mrs. Percy Browne, voted to appoint a committee of one to take charge of the Art Department of the fair. Mrs. Browne kindly volunteered to serve as that committee. Adjourned.”

The records having been approved, the president remarked that there was so much business to come before the meeting that she really could not tell where to begin, and she should be glad if some one would make a motion, just to start things.

“A motion to put things in motion,” murmured Miss Keene, looking around with the smile which everybody knew meant that she had made a joke.

Everybody smiled also, although nobody saw the point until the president echoed, with a pleased air of discovery, “Motion,—motion! Very good, Miss Keene.”

Then they all smiled once again, and Miss Gray told of an excellent jest made by a cousin in Boston:—

“My cousin in Boston—that is, she isn’t my real cousin, but a step-cousin by marriage—was at a concert once, and she made an awfully good joke. I don’t remember exactly now what it was, but it was awfully funny. It was something about music, and we all laughed.”

“It doesn’t seem to me,” spoke up Miss Sharp, acidly, “that Boston jokes will help the fair much;and I move you, Mrs. President,—if I don’t make a motion, I’m sure I don’t know who ever will,—that the fair be held on the 20th of April.”

“I second the motion,” promptly spoke up Miss Snob, who always seconded everything.

“It is moved and seconded,” said the president,“that the fair be held on the 20th of April; but I’m sure the 23d would suit me a great deal better.”

“Why not have it the 17th?” asked Miss Keene;“that seems to me quite late enough.”

“Oh, dear, no,” interrupted Mrs. Percy Browne,“I never could get half the things done for my department by that time. I move we have it the 30th.”

“Second the motion,” promptly responded Miss Snob.

“It is moved and seconded,” propounded Mrs. Smithe from the chair, “that the fair be held on the 30th. That seems to me an excellent time. If it be your minds, you will please to signify it. It is a vote.”

“I still stick to the 20th,” declared Miss Sharp, viciously. “I shall open my candy-table then, whether the rest of the fair is ready or not.”

“Sweets to the sweet,” murmured Miss Keene, looking around with her jest-announcing smile.

“The 20th is Sunday, any way,” observed the Hon. Mrs. Sampson Hoyt, in tones of great condescension.

“I don’t care,” persisted the contumacious Sharp. “I’ll have my part of the fair then, any way.”

“Suppose we compromise,” suggested the president, pacifically, “and say the 25th.”

There was considerable discussion, more or less acrimonious, at this proposition, but it was finally adopted without the formality of a vote, the secretary being instructed to set the date April 25th down as the final decision of the meeting.

“There will have to be a general committee of arrangements,” the president observed, this important preliminary having been settled. “I suppose it is customary for the chair to appoint them; but I am ready to receive nominations.”

“I nominate Miss Keene,” said Mrs. Browne, who wished to keep in that lady’s good graces.

“Second the motion,” Miss Snob exclaimed, with enthusiasm.

“Miss Keene will have enough to do at the cake-table,” Mrs. Smithe replied. “I think I’ll appoint Mrs. Hoyt, Mrs. Crowler, Mrs. Henderson, and Mrs. Lowell.”

“There’s never but three on that committee,”snapped Miss Sharp. “You’ll have to take off one.”

“Dear me!” responded Mrs. Smithe, in dismay;“I think you must be mistaken.”

But Miss Sharp persisted, and the president, driven into a corner, was forced to propose thatone of the ladies named should resign. Nobody seemed willing to do this, however, and it was at length decided that some one of the four should regard herself as a substitute, to act in case one of the others could not serve. The president could not, however, bring herself to specify which should be the substitute, and was greatly relieved when the conversation was turned by Mrs. Henderson’s remarking,—

“Speaking of substitutes reminds me. Did you know that you could make mince-pies without meat? My niece from Bangor—”

[The talk of the next fifteen minutes is omitted, as being irrelevant, relating exclusively to cooking. At the expiration of that time, the business of the occasion was accidentally reintroduced by an allusion on the part of Mrs. Crowler to some delicious chocolate macaroons which she had eaten at a fair in East Machias.]

“We really must have some more committees,”the president said, recovering herself with a start.“Will somebody make a motion?”

“I don’t think Friday is a good day for a fair, any way,” Mrs. Lowell now remarked, reflectively.“The 25th is Friday.”

“Oh, I never thought of that,” exclaimed half a dozen ladies, in dismay. “We should be all tired out for baking-day.”

“I don’t know what we can do,” the president said, in despairing accents,—“there seem to be so many days, and only one fair; and we’ve hadso many dates proposed. We shall have to unvote something.”

It was at this crisis that the Hon. Mrs. Sampson Hoyt rose to the heights of the parliamentary opportunity.

“I move the previous question,” she said, distinctly and firmly.

There fell a hush of awe over the sewing-circle, and even Miss Snob was a moment in bringing out her second.

“I don’t think!” Mrs. President Smithe ventured, a little falteringly, “that I quite understood the motion.”

“I moved,” the Hon. Mrs. Hoyt replied, with the air of one conscious that her husband had once been almost nominated to the State Legislature, and had been addressed as Honorable ever after, “I moved the previous question.”

“Yes?” Mrs. Smithe said, inquiringly and pleadingly.

“That takes everything back to the beginning,”Mrs. Hoyt condescended to explain, “and we can then change the date of our fair in a strictly legal way.”

She threw a glance of superb scorn around her as she spoke, and even Miss Sharp took on a subdued and corrected air.

“It is moved and seconded the previous question,”Mrs. Smithe propounded, with an air of great relief. “It is a vote.”

“I don’t think we had better do away with everything in this case,” Mrs. Hoyt observed, with a smile of gracious concession. “We might let the committee of arrangements stand.”

“That she’s chairman of,” whispered Mrs. Crowler, spitefully.

“I don’t remember,” observed Miss Sharp, gazing into futurity with an air of abstraction,“that there is anything in the by-laws about the previous question.”

A flutter stirred the entire company. The ladies looked at each other, and then with one accord turned their regards upon the Hon. Mrs. Hoyt, as one who, having got them into this difficulty, was in honor bound to help them out of it.

“I supposed everybody knew,” that lady remarked, with icy sweetness, “that the rules of making motions do not have to be in the by-laws. They are in”—the speaker hesitated, not being exactly sure of the title of the volume to which her husband had given so careful attention when expecting to be nominated: feeling, however, that anything was better than the appearance of ignorance, she went on precipitately—“in ‘Pole’s Manual.’”

Even Miss Sharp had no retort adequate to meet this crushing appeal to authority, not being sufficiently well informed to connect Pole with whist, so she contented herself by observing, witha sniff, that for her part she was glad she did not know so much as some people pretended to.

“It does seem to me,” observed Mrs. Henderson, at this point, “that we might let this one year go by without a fair. There’s been so much sickness in Rosedale this winter that everybody is tired out, and we had a great deal better wait till June, and have a strawberry-festival. I move we put the whole thing off till then.”

“Second the motion,” cried Miss Snob, with great promptitude.

“I cannot consent to put that motion,” the president said, with great dignity. “We have made up our minds to have a fair now, and we might as well have it, and be done with it.”

“I move,” Mrs. Browne put in sweetly, with the intention of suiting everybody, “that we have a fair and a strawberry-festival.”

Miss Snob seconded this motion with her customary enthusiasm.

“It is moved and seconded,” the president said,“that we have a fair and a strawberry-festival. But that seems a great deal; and I think I had better declare it not a vote, unless doubted.”

Nobody was clear about the effects of doubting a negative proposition; but Mrs. Crowler was pleased to observe, “Well, any way, now I come to think it over, I think, on the whole, I won’t be on the arrangements committee at all; but I’ll be chairman of the finance committee when that isfixed,—and that’ll leave only three on the arrangements.”

This moved Mrs. Henderson to resign, and Mrs. Lowell following her example, Mrs. Hoyt was left in solitary grandeur upon the committee.

Matters were not improved, moreover, when Miss Keene remarked, “If we’ve voted ‘the previous question,’ I don’t see but we’ve still got to fix the day. All that is undone now.”

“Certainly,” responded the Hon. Mrs. Sampson Hoyt, with the virtuous joy of an iconoclast gazing on the ruin he has wrought.

“We don’t seem to have anything exactly fixed,”the president said, with a helpless and conciliatory smile. “If somebody would make a motion—”

“It’s too late to make any more motions to-day,”Miss Sharp interrupted, with much vigor. “It’s ten minutes of six.”

At this announcement of the lateness of the hour, the entire company started to their feet in dismay; and although, when the president and secretary tried next day to remember what had been done, that the latter might make up her report, they recorded that the meeting adjourned, that statement must be regarded as having been purely a parliamentary fiction, entered in the secretary’s book to gratify that instinct innate in woman’s breast to follow exactly the regular and strictest forms of recognized rules of order.

Tale the Seventh.

A SKETCH IN UMBER.

A SKETCH IN UMBER.

THIRTEEN.

[The drawing-room of Mr. Sylvanus Potts Thompson, banker. Mr. Thompson and his wife, with ten guests, making a neat round dozen in all, are waiting the announcement of dinner. Enter Mr. Sylvanus Potts, a wealthy uncle from the country.]

Mr. Potts. I told the man there was no need to announce me; you knew I was coming next week, and a few days don’t matter. How do you do, nephew? how do you do, Jane?

Mr. Thompson. Why, uncle, we did not expect you so soon, but we are always glad to see you, of course.

Mrs. Thompson. Yes, always, dear Uncle Sylvanus. How is everybody at home?

Mr. P. Oh, they’re all well; you seem to be having a party, nephew?

Mr. T. Only a few friends to dinner. Let me introduce you.

[He takes him on his arm and presents him to his guests. While this is being done, a sentimental, elderly young woman, with thin curls, after whispering impressively with her neighbor, glides up to the hostess, and holds a moment’s conversation with that lady. Mrs. Thompson turns pale, and seems engaged in a mental calculation. Then she starts quickly toward her husband and draws him aside]

Mrs. T. Sylvanus, do you know how many people there are in this room?

Mr. T. Oh, about a dozen, I suppose.

Mrs. T. About a dozen! There are thirteen, Sylvanus, thirteen!

Mr. T. Well, what of it?

Mrs. T. What of it! Why, we can’t sit down to dinner with thirteen at table. Maria Smith says she should have a fit.

Mr. T. But she wouldn’t, my dear; she’s too fond of her dinner.

Mrs. T. Mr. Thompson, is it kind to speak so of my most particular friend?

Mr. T. But what does Maria expect us to do about it? Turn Uncle Sylvanus out of the house? Wasn’t I named for him, and haven’t I always been his favorite? Do you want me to be left out of his will?

Mrs. T. But something must be done. Don’t you see everybody is whispering and counting? Can’t we get somebody else?

Servant (who has entered unperceived). There is a man downstairs, sir, wants you to sign something.

Mr. T. Ah, my dear, here’s the very man,—young Jones. He’s our new cashier, and a very clever fellow.

[Exit Mr. Thompson. During his absence Mrs. Thompson communicates to Miss Smith the solution of the difficulty at which they have arrived. Everybodyhas soon heard of it, so that on Mr. Thompson’s return with Mr. Jones, the pair are greeted with much joking about the ill-luck which is thus averted. The necessary introductions take place.]

Mr. Jones. I am sure I am rejoiced at being instrumental in bringing good luck.

Miss Smith. You can certainly see how welcome you are, Mr. Jones.

Mr. J. But I fear it is not for myself, Miss Smith.

Miss S. That will undoubtedly come later, when we know you better.

Mr. P. I am glad you found somebody, nephew; for I must say I never would have given up my dinner for a foolish superstition; and as I came last and uninvited—

Mrs. T. (relieved of her fears and remembering the will) You are always invited to this house, Uncle Potts; and we would never hear of your going away.

Mr. Robinson. Well, it is all very well to call it a superstition, you know; but I knew—

[Mr. Robinson proceeds to narrate a grewsome and melancholy tale, in which disaster and death resulted from the imprudence of sitting down with thirteen at table; half a dozen other guests begin simultaneously the relation of six more equally or even more grewsome and melancholy tales upon the same subject, when they are interrupted by the arrival of a note for Mr. Robinson.]

Mr. R. My dear Mrs. Thompson, I am so sorry,but my brother has telegraphed for me to come to him at once on a matter of the utmost importance. I regret—

Mrs. T. But Mr. Robinson, don’t you see that—

Servant. Dinner is served.

Mr. T. May I have the honor, Mrs. Brown?

Miss S. But we can’t go to dinner now. Mr. Robinson is called away, and that leaves us thirteen again.

[An awful hush ensues, during which Mr. Robinson, finding himself regarded as a criminal, suddenly slips away, leaving the company to extricate themselves from their trying situation as best they can. The hush is followed by a Babel of voices, in which all sorts of suggestions are made.]

Mr. J. (with heroic and renunciatory self-denial) Let me speak, please, Mrs. Thompson. It was very kind in your husband to invite me to remain to dinner, but now that I shall be the thirteenth, I am sure you’ll excuse me.

Mr. T. But it seems so inhospitable.

Mrs. T. But it is more generous to deprive ourselves of Mr. Jones’s company than to be the means of bringing ill-luck upon him.

Mr. J. Quite right. I bid you good evening, Mrs. Thompson. I sincerely hope nothing further will occur to mar the pleasure of your evening.

[Mr. Jones having retired, a move is at once made toward the dining-room, but just as Mr. Thompson and Mrs. Brown reach the drawing-room door, theyare confronted by Mr. Robinson, who comes in breathless but triumphant.]

Mr. R. I thought it was so unkind of me to throw all your arrangements into confusion after the ill-luck of numbers you have already had, that I concluded to telegraph to my brother instead of going. Phew! How I have hurried! I am glad I am in time.

Mrs. Brown. Mr. Thompson, I positively cannot sit down at table with thirteen. My aunt died of it, and my second cousin. I am positive it runs in the family, and I know I should be the one to bear the consequence if we had thirteen at any table where I sat down.

[The greatest confusion follows. Miss Maria Smith is heard to declare that “Fate takes delight in persecuting her!” while young Algernon White mumbles something which has a distinct flavor of the Apostles’ Creed. Mr. Robinson shows a disposition to consider himself a most ill-used individual, thus to be rewarded for the trouble he has taken.]

Mr. T. My dear, what shall we do now?

Mrs. T. There is only one thing that I can think of; we can send across the street for Widow Ellis. You might go yourself and explain to her how it is.

[This suggestion being acted upon, the company settles into a solemn gloom, pending the return of the host with Widow Ellis. Every one knows the dinner will be spoiled, none being more acutely conscious of that fact than the hostess, and every one is nearly perishingwith hunger. More grewsome and melancholy stories are told, but in a wavering and subdued manner, as if they are being offered as excuses for resisting the cravings of appetite, which are rapidly becoming insupportable. Young White is heard to mutter, with fresh suspicions of theological terms, that one might as well die of thirteen at table as of starvation, and that for his part he prefers the former method of extinction. The return of Mr. Thompson with the Widow Ellis awakens some feeble enthusiasm, but it is evident that nothing short of a substantial dinner can restore the spirits of the company.]

Mr. P. Well, nephew, now I hope we may have some dinner. I, for one, am faint with hunger.

Mr. T. Oh, immediately. Mrs. Brown, we—

[At this juncture poor Mrs. Thompson, overcome with anxiety, fatigue, and hunger, produces a diversion by falling in a dead faint. The shrieks of Miss Maria Smith are re-enforced by those of other ladies of the company, and it is to be feared that Mr. Algernon White no longer enjoys the exclusive privilege of indulging in ecclesiastical references. The excitement usual upon such occasions reigns, and when at length Mrs. Thompson is restored to consciousness, but is found to be too ill to stand, and is borne off to her chamber, the company, once more reduced to thirteen, distributes itself in a stricken and overwhelmed state about the drawing-room, with the air of having ceased to struggle against an adverse fate.]

Widow E. We are thirteen again, neighbor; and if you’ll excuse me—

Mr. P. Thirteen or no thirteen, nephew, I’m going to have something to eat if it’s in this house.

[He disappears toward the dining-room, and as the resolution of Widow Ellis seems to have solved once more the dreadful conundrum of the fated number, the company hastily follow, too nearly famished to notice that the lady does not carry out her apparent intention of returning home, so that after all they sit down thirteen at table.]

Tale the Eighth.

APRIL’S LADY.

MY DEAR MR. GRAY,—Can you drop into my office to-morrow about noon? By some odd coincidence I received a story very similar to your “April’s Lady,” and bearing the same title, several days earlier, and should like to talk with you about it.

Very truly yours,

J. Q. LANE.

I was utterly confounded. I racked my brains to discover who could possibly have stolen my story, and even suspected the small black girl who dusted my rooms, although the sooty little morsel did not know one letter from another. The first draft of the story had lain in my desk for some time, it was true, yet that any literary burglar should have forced an entrance and then contented himself with copying this seemed, upon the whole, scarcely probable. I ransacked my memory for some old tale which I might unconsciously have plagiarized, but I could think of nothing; and, moreover, I reflected that the coincidence of names certainly could not be accounted for in this way, even did I recall the germ of my plot.

I presented myself at the office of the“Dark Red” at the hour appointed with a clear conscience, it is true, but with positively no suggestion whatever to offer in regard to the method by which a copy of my story could have reached the editor in advance of my own manuscript.

Mr. Lane received me with the conventionally cordial manner which is as much a part of editorial duties as is the use of the blue pencil, and without much delay came to the business of the call.

“There is something very singular about this affair,” he said, laying out my manuscript, and beside it another which I could see was written in a running feminine hand.“If the stories were a little more alike, I should be sure one was copied from the other; as it is, it is inconceivable that they have not at least a common origin. Where did you get your idea?”

“Why, so far as I know,” I replied in perplexity,“I evolved it from my inner consciousness; but the germ may have been the unconscious recollection of some incident or floating idea. I’ve tried to discover where I did get the fancy, but without a glimmer of success. Who sent you the other version?”

“A lady of whose integrity I am as sure as I am of yours. That’s the odd part of it. Besides, you are both of you too clever to plagiarize, even if you weren’t too honest. The mere similarity of theme isn’t so strange; that happens often enough; but that the title of the stories should be identical, and that in each the heroine should be named May—”

“Is her heroine named May?” I interrupted in astonishment; “why, then, she must have seen my copy; or,” I added, a new thought striking me, “she must have got the name in the same way I did. Itook the title of the story and the name of the heroine from a line of Swinburne, and—”

“And,” interrupted the editor in turn, catching up the manuscript before him, “so did she.”

And he showed me, written at the head of the page:—

“If you were April’s lady, and I were lord of May.”

“Well,” I remarked, with a not unnatural mingling of philosophy and annoyance, “it is all of a piece with my theory that ideas are in the air, and belong, like wild geese, to whoever catches them first; but it is vexatious, when I captured a fancy that particularly pleased me, to find that some woman or other has been smart enough to get salt on its tail-feathers before I did.”

Mr. Lane smiled at my desperate air, and at that moment his little office-boy, whom I particularly detest because of the catlike stillness and suddenness of his movements, silently produced first himself and then a card.

“‘Agnes Graham,’” read Mr. Lane. “Here is your rival to speak for herself. I hope you don’t mind seeing her?”

“Oh, by no means,” I replied rather ungraciously.“Let us see what she is like, and what she will have to say about this puzzle.”

The name was not wholly new to me, as I had seen it signed to various magazine articles, concerning which at this moment I had only the most vague and general idea. I was sitting with my back to the door, and in rising I still kept my face half turned away from the lady who entered, but I saw the reflection of her face in a mirror opposite without any sense of recognition. As she advanced a step or two, however, and half passed me, I knew her. The delicate ear, the fine sweep of the neck, the knot of golden brown hair, were all familiar. It was the lady who had sat before me in the cars from New York on that April day.

As she turned in recognition of Mr. Lane’s introduction, a faint flush seemed to show that she too recognized me, although I was unable to understand how she should know me, since she certainly had not turned her head once in the entire journey. I set it down to pure feminine intuition, not having wholly freed myself from that masculine superstition which regards woman’s instinct as a sort of supernatural clairvoyance.

My sensations on discovering her identity were not wholly unlike those of a man who inadvertently touches a charged Leyden jar.

“Good heavens!” I exclaimed, “what apsychological conundrum, or whatever you choose to call it. The whole matter is as plain to me now as daylight.”

“Well?” Mr. Lane asked, while Miss Graham regarded me with an air which seemed to question whether my insanity were of a dangerous type.

“Pardon me, Miss Graham, if I cross-question you a little,” I went on, becoming somewhat excited. “You came from New York on the morning train on Wednesday, the fifteenth—no, the sixteenth of last April, did you not?”

“Yes,” she answered, her color again a trifle heightened, but her appearance being rather that of perplexity than of self-consciousness.

“And on the way you read Swinburne till you came to the line,

‘If you were April’s lady, and I were lord of May,’

and it occurred to you what a capital name for a story ‘April’s Lady’ would be?”

“Yes,” she repeated; and then, with a yet more puzzled air, she turned to Mr. Lane to ask, “Is this mind-reading?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” returned he.“Mr. Gray can best tell what it is.”

“And the rest of the way to Boston,” I continued, ignoring the interruption, “youwere elaborating your story. You took the heroine’s name from the same line, and had a pun at the climax about the hero’s becoming‘lord of May.’”

“No,” Miss Graham retorted, beginning to enter into the spirit of the situation. “I deny the pun, although I acknowledge the rest. The pun I didn’t even think of.”

“Well, you see I haven’t read your manuscript, but I own I fell so low that I put in the pun myself. At least the old gentleman with a scar on his cheek, who sat in the corner of the car, gave you hints for—”

“The uncle,” broke in Miss Graham, with a gleeful laugh at the remembrance of the oddity of the old gentleman’s appearance.“But how in the world did you know?”

“Oh, he did me. We evidently had the same mental experience; which proves, I suppose, that we are literary Corsican brothers or something of the sort.”

“But the great question to be settled is,”Mr. Lane observed, bringing in, after some further talk, the editorial consideration, “whose story this really is.”

“Miss Graham’s, by all means,” I said instantly.“Hers was first in the field, and if I hadn’t impertinently looked over her shoulder, I shouldn’t have had any share in it whatever.”

Miss Graham laughed, showing a delicious dimple, and Mr. Lane, who evidently had no desire to settle the question under discussion, looked inquiringly at her for a response to my words.

“You are very generous, Mr. Gray,” she answered; “but in the first place my story has never been accepted for the ‘Dark Red,’and in the second, as the stories really ought to stand on their merits, I shall certainly not venture to put mine into competition with yours, but prefer to pocket my manuscript and retire.”

“I fear,” was my reply, “that I discover rather a tendency to sarcasm in what you say than any true humility. Of course the first point is one for Mr. Lane to settle.”

The editor cleared his throat with some embarrassment, but before he found the words he wanted, Miss Graham spoke again.

“I had not the slightest idea of being sarcastic, for, of course, it goes without saying that your story is better than mine; but since you choose to take it in that way, I am willing to leave the whole matter to Mr. Lane. He is at least the only person who has read both manuscripts.”

“Really,” Mr. Lane said, thus pushed into a corner, “I am extremely sorry to find myselfplaced in so trying a situation. There are points in which each story excels, and the best result would undoubtedly be attained by welding them together.”

“If that could be done,” said Miss Graham, thoughtfully.

“Now, in Mr. Gray’s version,” he continued,“the heroine is more attractive and real.”

“That,” I interpolated, trying to cover the awkwardness I felt by a jest, “is the first time in all my literary experience that the character I thought best in a story I’d written has seemed so to the editorial mind.”

The dark eyes of my neighbor gave me a bright, brief glance, but whether of sympathy with my statement or of contempt for the feebleness of my attempts at being jocose, I could not determine.

“While Miss Graham,” went on the editorial comment, “has decidedly the advantage in her hero.”

Miss Graham flushed slightly, but offered no remark in reply to this opinion beyond a smile which seemed one of frank pleasure. We sat in silence a moment, a not unnatural hesitancy preventing my making a proposition which had presented itself to my mind.

“If it will not seem impertinent to Miss Graham,” I ventured at length, “I would propose that we really do try the experiment of collaboration on this story. I have never worked with anybody, but I promise to be tractable; and the thing had so odd a beginning that it is a pity to thwart the evident intention of destiny that we shall both have a hand in it.”

To this proposition the lady at first returned a decided and even peremptory negative; but my persuasions, seconded by those of Mr. Lane, who was partly curious and partly anxious to escape from the necessity of arbitrating in the matter, in the end induced her to alter her decision.

The result of the interview was that when we left the office of the “Dark Red” Miss Graham had my manuscript and I hers, and that an appointment had been made for my calling upon her with a view to an interchange of comments and criticisms.

Upon the appointed evening I presented myself at the home of Miss Graham, and almost without the usual conventionalities concerning the weather we proceeded to discuss the stories. We began with great outward suavity and courtesy the exchange of compliments, which were so obviously formal andperfunctory that in a moment more we looked into each other’s faces and burst into laughter which if hardly polite was at least genuine.

“Come,” I said, “now the ice is broken and we can say what we really think; and I must be pardoned for saying that that hero of yours, whom Mr. Lane praised, is the most insufferable cad I’ve encountered this many a day. He can’t be set off against that lovely girl in my story. Why, the truth is, Miss Graham, I meant her to be what I fancied you might be. She’s the ideal I built up from seeing you in the cars.”

“I must say,” Miss Graham retorted with spirit, “that if you meant that pert heroine of yours for me, I am anything but complimented.”

“It is a pity, then, that you didn’t intend your hero for me, and we should have been more than quits.”

She blushed so vividly that a sudden light burst upon me.

“Good heavens!” I exclaimed, “he does have my eyes and beard; but you didn’t see me. It isn’t possible—”

“But it is,” interrupted she, desperately.“With a mirror in the end of the car directly before me all the way from New York, do you suppose I could help seeing you! I’m sure you kept your eyes on me steadily enough to give me a good excuse.”

I whistled rudely; whereat she looked offended, and we went on from one thing to another until we had got up a very respectable quarrel indeed. There is nothing more conducive to a thoroughly good understanding between persons of opposite sex than a genuine quarrel; and having reached the point where there was no alternative but to separate in anger or to apologize, we chose the latter course, and having mutually humbled ourselves, after that got on capitally.

“It is my deliberate conviction,” she observed, when we at length got upon a footing sufficiently familiar for jesting, “that this story is really mine, and that you purloined it from me by some mysterious clairvoyance.”

“That may be,” I admitted. “I once guessed that a man was a bartender by the way he stirred his coffee at the steamer table, and that got me a very pretty reputation as a seer for a day or two; and very likely the truth is that I was all the time a mind-reader without knowing it.”

She smiled good-naturedly—more good-naturedly, indeed, than the jest deserved; and from that moment our acquaintance got on famously. The story was far from advancingas rapidly, however. A very brief time sufficed to reduce both versions of “April’s Lady” to hopeless confusion, but to build from the fragments a new and improved copy was a labor of much magnitude. Circumstances moreover, conspired to hinder our work. It was necessary that we verify our impressions of material we had used, and to do this we were obliged to attend the theatre together, to read together various poems, and together to hear a good deal of music. A little ingenuity, and a common inclination to prolong these investigations, effected so great a lengthening out that it was several months before we could even pretend to be ready to begin serious work upon the story; and even then we were far from agreeing in a number of important particulars.

“Agnes,” I remarked, one February evening, when we were on our way home from a concert to which we had boldly gone without even a pretence that it was in the remotest way connected with our literary project, “I fear we are becoming demoralized, and it seems to me the only hope of our ever completing‘April’s Lady’ is to put everything else aside for the time being and give our minds to it. I can get my work arranged, and you can finish those articles for ‘TheQuill’ by the middle of March. Then, we can be quietly married and go to some nice old-fashioned place—say St. Augustine—for a couple of months and get this magnum opus on paper at last.”

“As to being married,” returned she sedately,“have you considered that we could not possibly make a living, since we should inevitably be always writing the same things?”

“Why, that is my chief reason,” I retorted,“for proposing it. Think how awkward it is going to be if either of us marries somebody else, and then we write the same things. It is a good deal better to have our interests in common if our inventive faculty is to be so.”

“There is something in what you say,”Agnes assented; “and it would be especially awkward for you, since the invention is in my head.”

“Then we will consider it all arranged.”

“Oh, no, George; by no means. I couldn’t think of it for a minute!”

Whether she did think of it for a minute is a point which may be left for the settling of those versed in the ways of the feminine mind; certain it is that the programme was carried out—except in one trifling particular. We were quietly married, we did go to St. Augustine, but as for doing anything withthe story, that was quite another thing. We did not finish it then, and we have not finished it yet, and I have ceased to have any very firm confidence that we ever shall finish it; although, whenever arises one of those financial crises which are so painfully frequent in the family of a literary man, and we sit down to consider possible resources, one or the other of us is sure sooner or later to observe:—

“And then there is ‘April’s Lady,’ you know.”

A CUBAN MORNING.

[Scene, the shady piazza of the hotel at Marianao, Cuba. Time, nine o’clock on a hot March morning. Miss Peltonville and Arthur Chester tête-à-tête.]

She. Why did you follow us to Cuba?

He. I have already told you that I thought you were in Florida.

She. Yes? And so you came to Marianao, where nobody comes at this time of year, in order that you might be perfectly safe from an encounter, I suppose.

He. Oh, I—that is; precisely.

She. I had a letter from Annie Cleaves yesterday.

He. Had you?

She. Yes; and she said you told her that you were coming to Cuba to find me.

He. Oh, that’s nothing. It isn’t to be supposed I told her the truth.

She. Do you speak the truth so seldom, then? Is there no dependence to be put on what you say?

He. None whatever; otherwise I should be continually hampered by the necessity of conforming my actions to my words. You can see yourself how inconvenient that would be.

She. For one who has had so little practice, very likely; but then you would find it a novel experience, I have no doubt.

He. Ah, you have given me an idea. I’ll try it when all other novelties in life are exhausted.

She. Don’t put it off too long, or from the force of habit you may find it impossible.

He. You underrate my adaptability.

She. Meanwhile I wish to know why you came.

He. Since you are here yourself, you might be supposed to regard the place as sufficiently interesting to attract the traveller.

She. Then you decline to tell me?

He. Oh, no; I came because you amuse me.

She. Thank you for nothing.

He. And consequently I am in love with you, as I did myself the honor to mention before you left New York.

She. Am I to understand that amusement is your idea of love?

He. Love certainly must be something that does not bore one.

She. But it seems a somewhat limited view to take.

He. Oh, it is only one way out of many; I assure you I have quantities of ideas upon the subject, all founded upon experience. I loved Lottie Greenwell because she made a glorious champagne cup. Indeed, for ten days I positively adored her, until one night she put in too much curaçoa, and Irealized how uncertain a foundation my passion had. Then there was Elsie Manning. My passion for her was roused entirely by her divine waltzing, but I realized that it isn’t good form for a man to waltz with his wife, and I stood a much better chance if she married some other man. After that came Kate Turner; she writes so fascinating a letter that I lost my heart every time I saw her handwriting on the back of an envelope, although perhaps that feeling you would call only a fancy, since nobody would think of marrying on a virtue that is sure to end with the wedding. A wife never writes to her husband about anything but the servants and the payment of her milliner’s bills; so my flirtation with her wouldn’t really count as a love affair.

She. You excel in nice metaphysical distinctions.

He. Then there was Miss French. I loved her because she snubbed me,—just as I loved Nora Delaney for her riding, and Annie Cleaves for her music.

She. And now you love me, I am to understand, as suited to the position of court jester to your Royal Highness.

He. One must have some sort of a reason for being in love.

She. But one needn’t be in love.

He. Oh, yes; life is very dull otherwise; and besides, I have always thought it very stupid to marry without having been in love a dozen times at least. One is apt to lose his head otherwise;and how can he judge of the value of his passion without having had a good deal of experience?

She. So you advertise yourself as a marrying man?

He. Every bachelor is a marrying man. It is only a question of finding a convenient wife.

She. Like a convenient house, I suppose.

He. Exactly.

She. I wonder any woman ever consents to marry a man.

He. They know their own sex too well to be willing to marry a woman.

She. But men are such selfish creatures!

He. You are amazingly pretty when you toss your head that way. It is worth coming from New York to see.

She. It is well you think so; otherwise you might consider your voyage a waste of time.

He. What, with the certainty of your consenting to marry me?

She. I like your assurance! Why should I marry you?

He. I supposed that with your sex the fact of my amazing attachment would be a sufficient reason.

She. Your knowledge of our sex is then remarkably limited. Apparently, whether I happen to love you is of no particular consequence.

He. Oh, love is said to beget love.

She. But you love me, you say, because I amuseyou. Now you don’t amuse me in the least, and as I do not know just how to cultivate a passion simply on the rather doubtful ground of your affection, especially with the chance of its being transient, there really seems to be very little chance of reciprocity.

He. Do you know what a tremendously hot day it is?

She. I don’t see the connection, and I am sure I am cool enough.

He. But you make it very hot for me! How picturesque that ragged fellow over there looks, riding on the top of his high saddle.

She. With a string of mules tied to his horse’s tail. I am fond of the mules, their bells are so musical.

He. And their bray.

She. And the muleteers sing such weird songs. I hear them going by about four o’clock in the morning, on their way to the Havana market, and the effect is most fascinating.

He. I should have expected you to be fond of the mules.

She. Why?

He. A fellow feeling is said to have a softening effect, and the mule’s strongest characteristic is—

She. Consistency!

He. And as I was about to remark, we are apt to value others most for the virtues we do not ourselves possess.

She. You are sufficiently rude.

He. There is always danger that honesty will be thought rude.

She. Really, you begin to amuse me. Please go on; I would like to try falling in love on the amusement plan; it must be very droll.

He. Oh, bother the amusement! Like the young ladies in novels, I would be loved for myself alone.

She. I fear that would be more difficult than the other way. What have you ever done to make me admire you?

He. Perhaps nothing. Admiration presupposes the capability of appreciation.

She. Ah! What have you done, then, worthy of admiration?

He. I have managed to find you at Marianao, and bring about a tête-à-tête before I have been here fifteen hours.

She. Wonderful man! And of all that, what comes?

He. That I ask you to marry me. That is certainly something.

She. Yes; it isn’t much, and you have done it before. But as you say, it is certainly something.

He. You are always flattering! Really, one wouldn’t have expected you to be light now, when it is my deepest affections and all that sort of touching thing with which you are trifling.

She. You are a humbug!

He. Of course; so are you; so is everybody. Civilization is merely the apotheosis of humbug.

She. My friend, that trick of striving after epigram is fast making you as bad as a confirmed punster.

He. Still, it is all true. I am a humbug in proposing to you; you, if you reject me—

She. I certainly do, most emphatically and finally!

He. You make me the happiest of men.

She. You make your system of humbug far too complicated for me to follow.

He. Why, this is genuine.

She. Anything genuine from you, I fear, is impossible.

He. Oh, no; I have to be genuine occasionally, for the sake of contrast. The humbug was in asking you to marry me, and I wouldn’t have had you say yes for the world.

She. I never suspected you of insanity, Mr. Chester. Am I to infer that the climate of Cuba, or the wines—

He. Oh, neither, I assure you. Besides, Cuba has no wines, as you ought to know. Now, see; I’ll do you the rare honor of telling you the truth. Of course, you are at liberty to believe it or not, as you please; and very likely you won’t, because it happens to be as true as the Gospel, revised version. Some days since, I asked Annie Cleaves to marry me.

She. What particular thing had she been playing to rouse you to that point of enthusiasm?

He. If my memory serves me, it was the Chopin Nocturne in G minor. She did play extremely well, and as we happened to be in the conservatory afterward, I improved the opportunity to propose.

She. Oh, very naturally!

He. It is a form of words that comes very readily to my lips, as you know. Annie confessed to that very superfluous and old-fashioned sentiment called love, which wasn’t in good form, I’ll admit; but in consideration for the object of her attachment, and the fact that on that particular evening I was in love myself, I managed to overlook it.

She. Very good of you, I’m sure. I hope Annie appreciated your generosity.

He. Very likely she didn’t. Your sex very seldom do appreciate masculine virtues; but Annie has a far more old-fashioned and worse vice than love. Why, the girl, in the midst of these enlightened nineteenth-century days, actually goes to the nonsensical bother of keeping a conscience! It must be more trouble to attend to, Agnes, than her aunt Wheeler’s seven pet poodles and three red-headed parrots.

She. I suppose you are right. You don’t speak from experience, though, do you?

He. Oh, no; I never had a conscience: as a boy, I preferred white mice; now I have my horses, you know.

She. And your innumerable loves.

He. If such trifles are to be taken into account.

She. Go on about Annie.

He. Well, on my confessing how far I had carried my flirtation with you— I can’t, for the life of me, tell how I happened to speak of it; I am usually more discreet.

She. I should hope so.

He. Oh, I am, I assure you; but the loves are so numerous, while I am but one, that they sometimes get the better of my discretion. What is one among so many?

She. Oh, in this case, absolutely nothing.

He. Thank you again.

She. But to continue—

He. Well, to continue, Annie actually seemed to think that you had some sort of claim upon me. Fancy!

She. She needn’t have troubled.

He. Oh, of course not. Why, I have offered myself to dozens of girls, with no more idea of marrying them than I have of becoming a howling dervish; and more than that, I have habitually been accepted. That is one thing about you that attracted me, do you know? There is a beautiful novelty about being rejected.

She. So that is the secret of my amusing you, is it? You ought to have explained this to Annie.

He. Oh, she wouldn’t have understood. Like every other girl, ’twas the personal application thatshe was touched by. You see she didn’t know the other girls, and she did know you; and she seems to think your no more binding than any other person’s yes. Perhaps she knows that a woman’s negative—

She. Really, Arthur, that’s so hackneyed that if you haven’t the gallantry not to say it you ought to be ashamed to repeat anything so stale.

He. Perhaps you are right; I have known you to be on very rare occasions. However, Annie insisted that I should come, and, as she said,“assure myself of your sentiments and of my own.” Did you ever hear anything more absurd? As if I didn’t know, all the time, that you were dying for me; and as if I—despite my mad and overpowering passion for your lovely self, Miss Peltonville—couldn’t tell as well in New York as in Cuba whether I wanted to marry her or not.

She. If you were no better informed of your own sentiments than of mine, I don’t wonder she doubted your conclusions.

He. Oh, she didn’t in the least.

She. At least, Annie may set her mind quite at rest, so far as I am concerned.

He. Thank you so much. It is such a relief to have things settled.

She. What would you have done if I had accepted you?

He. Oh, I was confident of my ability of putting the question so that you wouldn’t.

She. I have almost a mind to do it, even now.

He. Really?

She. Oh, don’t be alarmed. There is one insuperable obstacle.

He. What is that?

She. Yourself.

He. Then I am quite safe. That is a permanent one.

She. Well, I wish Annie joy of her bargain. She is worthy of a better fate; and since we are talking frankly, I must say that what she can see in you I can’t imagine.

He. These things are so strange; there is no accounting for them. Why, I have been perfectly puzzled—do you know?—ever since I came last night, to tell what I found in you last winter.

She. Since we seem to be striving to outdo each other in abuse, it is quite in keeping for me to add, that I have no occasion to bother my head on such a question, for I never pretended to have found anything in you.

He. But then, as I said, you amused me; and one may sometimes be so far amused that—

She. His amusement may even amount to astonishment, perhaps; and, by the way, that gentleman on the gray horse, just coming between the China laurels with papa, expects to marry me.

He. Fred Armstrong, by all that is unspeakable! Agnes Peltonville, I humble myself in thedust before you; and no humiliation could be greater than going down into Cuban dust. You are an angel; you have removed my last fear.

She. Yes; and how?

He. I was always jealous of Fred Armstrong; he was forever dangling about Annie. Do I understand that you are engaged?

She. Oh, I didn’t say that I expected to marry him; but since Annie confesses such a strong attachment to you—

He. Oh, I didn’t say I was the object of the attachment.

[They sit confronting each other in silence a moment, until the riders, having dismounted, are seen approaching the piazza. Then Chester leans forward impulsively, and speaks with a new intensity.]

He. Agnes!

She. Arthur!

He. Quick! Before they come! You won’t send me away?

She. But—

He. No, no more nonsense; I am in dead earnest now. You know I couldn’t live without you, or I shouldn’t have followed you to Cuba.

She. And Annie Cleaves?

He. Oh, if you had a letter from her yesterday, you must know she’s engaged to Bob Wainwright. Is it yes?

She. (rising.) It would be a pity that you should have come so far for nothing.

[As he rises also he manages to catch her hand, which he clasps joyously before the pair go forward to meet the new-comers.]

He. I hope you had a pleasant ride, Mr. Peltonville? I like Marianao so well that I have concluded to remain a while.

Tale the Ninth.

DELIA GRIMWET.

To an ordinary observer, nothing could be more commonplace than Kempton, a decrepit little apology for a village, lying on the coast of Maine. Properly speaking, however, no sea-port can be utterly commonplace, with its suggestion of the mystery of the sea, the ships, the sailors who have been to far lands, the glimpses of unwritten tragedies on every hand. But among sea-side villages Kempton was surely dull enough, and dry enough, and lifeless enough,—as if the sea-winds had sucked its vitality, leaving it empty and pallid and juiceless, like the cockle-shells which bleached upon its sandy beaches.

Yet Kempton had one peculiarity which marked it as singular among all New England towns. It had a woman to dig its graves.

Its one church stood stark and doleful upon the hill at whose foot lay the rotting wharves; and back from the church stretched the church-yard in which the Kempton dead took their long repose, scarcely more monotonousthan their colorless lives. The sexton, digging their last resting-places in the ochery loam, might look far off toward the sea where they had wrested from the grudging waters a scanty subsistence; and the dead wives, if so be that their ears were yet sentient, might lie at night and hear below the beat of the waves which afar had rolled over the unmarked graves of their sailor husbands.

To and fro among the grass-grown mounds the sexton went daily, quite unmindful of being the unique feature of Kempton by belonging to the weaker sex. With masculine stride and coarse hands, her unkempt locks blown by the salt winds, the woman went her way and did her work with a steadfastness and a vigor which might have put to shame many a man idling about the boats under the hill. She was not an old woman,—not even middle-aged, except with the premature age of toil and sorrow; but the weather-beaten face, the stooping shoulders, and the faded hair made her seem old. To look at her, it was difficult to realize what her youth could have been like, or to call up any image of sweet or gracious maidenhood in which she could have shared.

It was a gray November day. The white-caps made doubly black the dark waves ofthe bay, and the bitter wind blew freshly through the withered grass and stubble, chasing the faded leaves over Kempton Hill until they rushed about the old meeting-house like a flight of terrified witches. A stranger was driving slowly up the road from the next town in an open carriage, and as he came to the top of the hill he drew rein before the church and looked about him.

His gaze was not that of one who beheld the scene for the first time. He gazed down at the irregular houses under the hill, cuddled like frightened and weak-kneed sheep. He looked over the bay to the lighthouse, looming ghastly and white against the dark sea and sky. His glance took in all the details of the picture, cold and joyless, devoid alike of warmth and color. He shivered and sighed, his brows drooping more heavily yet over his dark piercing eyes, and then turned his gaze to objects nearer at hand.

Close by was the stark church, with weather-beaten steeple, wherein half a dozen generations of Kempton women,—the men, for the most part, being at sea,—had worshipped the power of the storm, praying more for the escape from evil of the absent than for good to themselves. Beyond the church appeared the first headstones of thegraveyard, the ground sloping away so rapidly that little more than the first row of slate slabs was visible from the street. With another shiver Mr. Farnsworth (for by that name the gentleman played his part upon this world’s stage) got down from his carriage, fastened his horse, and walked toward the stones, whose rudely chiselled cherubs leered at him through their tawny rust of moss with a diabolic and sinister mirthfulness.

As Mr. Farnsworth opened the sagging and unpainted gate of the enclosure, he became aware that the place was not empty. The head and shoulders of a human being were visible half-way down the hill, now and then obscured by the dull-reddish heap of earth thrown up from a partially dug grave.

The visitor made his way down the irregular path, so steep as to be almost like a rude flight of stairs, and as he neared the worker, he suddenly perceived, with something of a shock, that the grave-digger was a woman. She worked as if familiar with her task, a man’s battered hat pushed back from her forehead, over which her faded hair straggled in confusion, and across which certain grimy streaks bore witness that she had not escaped the primal curse, but labored in the sweat of her brow.

Kempton’s peculiarity in the matter of its sexton had not come to the knowledge of the stranger before, although he once had known the village life somewhat intimately. He regarded the woman with a double curiosity,—to see what she was like and to discover whether perchance he had ever known her. He paused as he neared her, resting one nicely gloved hand upon a tilted stone which perpetuated the memory and recorded the virtues of a captain who reposed in some chill cave under the Northern seas. Some slight sound caught the ear of the sexton, who until then had not perceived his approach; she looked up at him stolidly, and as stolidly looked down again, continuing her work without interruption. If there remained any consciousness of the strangeness of her occupation, or if there stirred any womanly shame to be so observed, they were betrayed by no outward sign. She threw up the dull-yellow earth at the feet of the new-comer as unmoved as if she had still only the dwellers in the graves as companions of her labor.

“Don’t you find this rather hard work, my good woman?” the gentleman inquired at length, more by way of breaking the silence than from any especial interest.

“Yes,” the sexton returned impassively,“it’s hard enough.”

“It is rather unusual work for a woman, too,” he said.

To this very obvious remark she returned no answer, a stone to which she had come in her digging seeming to absorb all her attention. She unearthed the obstacle with some difficulty, seized it with her rough hands, and threw it up at the feet of the stranger, who watched her with that idle interest which labor begets in the unconcerned observer.

“Do you always do this work?” Farnsworth asked at length.

“Yes,” was the laconic return.

“But the old sexton,—Joe Grimwet,—is he gone?”

The woman looked up with some interest at this indication that the other had some previous acquaintance with Kempton and its people. She did not, however, stop her labor, as a man would probably have stopped.

“Yes,” she said. “He’s buried over yonder,—there beyond the burdocks.”

The gentleman changed his position uneasily. Some subtile disquietude had arisen to disturb his serenity. The wind rustled mournfully among the dry leaves, the pebbles rattled against the spade of the grave-digger,increasing the sombreness of a scene which might easily affect one at all susceptible to outward influences. In such an atmosphere a sensitive nature not unfrequently experiences a certain feeling of unreality, as if dealing with scenes and creatures of the imagination rather than with actualities; and Farnsworth, whatever the delicacy of his mental fibre, was conscious of such a sense at this moment. He hastened to speak again, as if the sound of his own voice were needed to assure him of the genuineness of the place and scene.

“But how long has he been dead?” he asked. “And his daughter; what became of her?”

The grave-digger straightened herself to her full height; brushing back her wind-blown hair with one grimy hand, she raised her face so that her deep-set eyes were fixed upon the questioner’s face.

“So you knew Delia Grimwet?” she said.“When was you here before? It’d go hard for you to make her out now, if it’s long since.”

“Is she here still?” Farnsworth persisted, ignoring her question.

“Yes,” the sexton replied, suddenly sinking back into the unfinished grave as a frightened animal might retreat into its den.“Yes; she lives in the old place.”

“Alone?”

“Her and the boy.”

He recoiled a step, as if the mention of a child startled or repelled him. Yet to a close observer it might have seemed as if he were making an effort to press her with further questions. If so his courage did not prove sufficient, and he watched in silence while the woman before him went steadily on with her arduous work. Presently, however, he advanced again toward the edge of the pit, which was rapidly approaching completion under her familiar labor.

“Should I find her at home at this time?”he inquired. “Or would she be out at work?”

The woman started and crouched, much as if she had received or expected a blow.

“She’s out, most likely,” she replied in a muffled voice. “She’ll be home along about sundown.”

Farnsworth lingered irresolutely a moment or two, as if there were many things concerning which he could wish to ask; but, as the woman gave him no encouragement, he turned at last and climbed the slippery, ragged path up to the church, untethered hishorse, and drove slowly down the hill to the village.

Cap’n Nat Hersey was just coming out of the village store, and to him Farnsworth addressed an inquiry where he might find shelter for himself and horse.

“Well,” the cap’n responded, with the deliberation of a man who has very little to say and his whole life to say it in, “well I dunno but ye might get a chance with Widder Bemis, an’ I dunno as ye could; but there ain’t no harm trying, as I knows of.”

Further inquiry regarding the whereabouts of the domicile of the Widow Bemis led to an offer on the part of Cap’n Hersey to act as pilot to that haven. He declined, however, to take a seat in the buggy. The Cap’n had his own opinion of land-vehicles. A man might with perfect assurance trust himself in a boat; but, for his own part, the cap’n had no faith in those dangerous structures which roam about with nothing better than dry land under them. He walked along by the side of the carriage, conversing affably with the stranger under his convoy.

“Isn’t it a queer notion to have a woman for a sexton?” Farnsworth asked, as they wended along.

“Well, yes,” the captain returned reflectively.“Yes, it is sort of curious. Folks mostly speaks of it that comes here. It is curious, if ye look at it that way. But it all come about as natural as a barnacle on a keel. Old Sexton Grimwet kept getting considerable feeble, and Dele she took to helping him with his work. She was sort of cut off from folks, as ye may say, owing to having a baby and no father to show for it, and she naturally took to heaving anchor alone, or leastways along with the old man. And when the old man was took down with a languishment, she turned to and did all his work for him,—having gradually worked into it, as you may say.”

The cap’n paused to recover from his astonishment at having been betrayed into so long a speech; but, as the stranger had the air of expecting him to continue, he presently went on again:

“There was them that wanted her turned out when old Grimwet died. Some said a woman of that character hadn’t ought to have no connection with the church, even to digging its graves. But Parson Eaton he was good for ’em—I’ve always noticed that when these pious men gets their regular mad up they most generally have things their own way; and he preached ’em a sermon aboutthe Samaritan woman, and Mary Magdalene, and a lot more of them disreputable Scripture women-folks, and, though he never mentioned Dele by name, they all knew what he was driving at, and they wilted. ’Twas a pitiful sight to see the girl a-digging her own father’s grave up there. Me and Tom Tobey and Zenas Faston took hold and finished it for her.”

They moved on in silence a moment or two. Farnsworth’s gaze was fixed upon the darkening bay, and no longer interrogated his companion; but the latter soon again took up his narrative:—

“’Twas well the parson stood up for Dele, too; women-folks is so cussed hard on each other. They wouldn’t ha’ let the girl live, I believe. I always were of the notion there warn’t no harm in Dele. Some —— city chap got the better of her. She never was over-smart, but she was awful pretty; and I never believed there was any harm in her. At any rate, she digs a grave as well as a man, and I guess them that’s in ’em don’t lay awake none thinking who tucked ’em in.”

The house of the Widow Bemis was by this time reached, and that estimable lady, who in the summer furnished accommodations to a boarder whenever that rare blessing was to be secured in Kempton, readily undertookthe charge of Mr. Farnsworth and his horse for the night. The latter was given into the care of her daughter, for the frequent absences of the men had accustomed the damsels of Kempton to those labors which in inland villages are more frequently left to their brothers; and Farnsworth strolled off toward the wharves, leaving the widow Bemis and Cap’n Hersey in an agony of curiosity in regard to himself and his errand.

Whatever may have been Farnsworth’s feelings at the discovery that the daughter of the dead sexton and the woman of whom he had asked tidings of her were identical,—and they must have been both deep and strong—he had given no outward sign. But now the settling of his brows, and the disquiet apparent in his eyes betrayed his inward conflict. He strolled out upon one of the rotting wharves about which the tide lapped in mournful iteration, folded his arms upon a breast-high post, and stood gazing seaward.

The retrospect which occupied his mind was scarcely more cheerful than the gray scene which spread before his eyes. How awful are the corpses of dead sins which memory casts up, as the sea its victims! The betrayal of a woman is a ghastly thing when one looks back upon it stripped of thegarlands and enchantments of passion and temptation; and to Farnsworth, with the image fresh in his rememberance of that faded, earth-stained woman digging a grave upon the bleak hillside, the fault of his youth seemed an incredible dream which only stubborn and stinging memory converted into a possibility. A retrospect is apt to be essentially a plea for self against conscience; but in his gloomy revery Farnsworth found scant excuse for the wreck he had made of the life of Delia Grimwet. He had gone away, married, and lived honored and prosperous. He would have forgotten, had not some nobility of his nature prevented. With the stubbornness of his race, he had fought long and determinedly against his conscience, but he had been forced to yield at last. The death of his wife, to whom he had been tenderly attached, had at once left him free to make such reparation as might still be possible, and had softened him as only sharp sorrow can. He had come to Kempton with the determination of finding Delia, and of doing whatever could be done, at whatever cost to himself.

He had been unprepared, however, for the woman he found. He had left a fresh, beautiful young girl; ten years had transformedher into a repulsive old woman. He had no means of adequately measuring the force of the storms of scorn and poverty and sorrow which had beaten upon Delia Grimwet in the years that had made of him the cultured, delicately nurtured man he was. What man ever appreciated the woe of the woman he betrays? Indeed, what measure has a man of the sorrow of any woman? Farnsworth had painfully to adjust himself to a condition of affairs for which he should have been prepared, yet which took him absolutely by surprise.

He lingered upon the bleak wharf, unconsciously the object of much mildly speculative curiosity, until the twilight began to fall. Then with a shiver, no less of mind than of body, he shook off his painful abstraction, and turned his steps toward the path, once well known, which led to the house of Delia Grimwet. It seemed to him, as he paused a brief instant with his hand upon the old knocker, as if nothing here had changed in ten years. The sunlight would have shown him traces of decay, but in the gathering dusk the house seemed a pallid phantom from the past, unchanged but lifeless.

But his knock at once destroyed all illusions, since it summoned the woman who belonged not at all to that past which he remembered, but to the pitiful and too tangible present. She held her guttering candle up without a word, and, having identified him, made him, without speaking, a signal to enter.

When Farnsworth had left her in the afternoon, Delia crouched in the bottom of the grave she was digging, her first feeling being an unreasoning desire for concealment. She thought she should remain passive if the sides of the pit collapsed and buried her. In the old days before her boy was born she had been night after night out on the old wharves, praying for courage to drown herself. After the child came, her feelings changed, and she longed only to escape and to take her son away from the scorn and the sordid life which surrounded them. Gradually she had become hardened; hers was one of those common natures to which custom and pain are opiates, mercifully dulling all sensibilities. To-day the appearance of her betrayer had revivified all the old impressions, and for a moment seemed to transport her to the early days when her anguish was new. The keenest pangs of sorrow stabbed her afresh, and she lived again the bitter moments of her sin and shame. Her instinct was to flee from the man whose presence meant to her only pain.

But habit is strong, and presently the fading light reminded the sexton that her work was still unfinished, and that Widow Pettigrove, who was past all earthly tribulation, must have her last bed prepared, whatever the woe of the living woman who worked at it with trembling hands and a sensation as if a demon had clutched her by the throat. Yet work was not unmerciful; it brought some relief, since it served to dilute the thought which rushed dizzyingly to her brain, and by the time her toil was completed she was steadier. When she opened the door to Farnsworth she was not unlike her usual stolid self. She perceived at a glance that he had learned who she was, and she hoped in a blind, aching way, that he had not betrayed his presence to the neighbors, thus to re-awaken all the old stinging flight of bitter words.

Farnsworth followed Delia into the kitchen, without even those greetings which habit renders so involuntary that only in the most poignant moments are they disregarded. With their past between them it was not easy to break the silence. Farnsworth seated himself, and the woman stood regarding him. There was in her attitude all the questioning, all the agony, of her years of suffering. Herwrongs and her sorrows gave her a dignity before which he shrank as he could not have quailed under the most withering reproaches. Whatever words he would have spoken—and no man can come deliberately to so important a crisis without formulating, even if unconsciously, the plea which his self-defence will make—were forgotten, or seemed miserably inadequate now. What were words to this woman, pallid and worn before her time with privation, anguish, and unwomanly toil? The contrast between his rich and careful dress and her coarse garb, between his white hands and her knotted fingers, between his high-bred, pale face and her cowed, weather-beaten countenance, was too violent not to be apparent to them both,—as if they were in some strange way merely spectators looking dispassionately at this wretched meeting of those who had once been passionate lovers.

With each moment the silence became more oppressive; yet as each moment dragged by it became more difficult to break the stillness. Only a man utterly devoid of remorse or feeling could have framed upon his tongue commonplace phrases at such a time. It seemed to Farnsworth as if he were brought to judgment before the whole universe. His throat became parched. Helonged to have the candle and the flames flickering in the old fireplace go out in darkness, and take from his sight the Nemesis that confronted him.

He broke the silence at last with a cry:—

“Ah, my God, Delia! What have I done?”

She wavered as she stood, putting out her hand as if reaching for support. Then she half staggered backward into a chair.

“There is nothing I can say!” Farnsworth went on vehemently. “There is nothing I can do! I came here dreaming of making reparation; but there is no reparation I can make. There is nothing that can change the past,—nothing that will undo what I have done to you. Oh, my God! How little I dreamed it would be like this!”

“No,” she said slowly, almost stupidly,“nothing can undo it.”

“Why did you not tell me?” he began.“Why—”

But the words rebuked him before they were spoken. He buried his face in his hands, and again they were silent. What the woman,—this woman who had never been able to think much, even in her best days, and who now was blunted and dulled almost to stupidity,—what she felt in thosebitter moments, who can tell? The man’s soul was a tumult of wild regret and unavailing remorse, while she waited again for him to speak.

“But,” Farnsworth said at length, a new idea seizing him, “but the—our child, Delia? The boy?”

A shuddering seized her. Unused to giving way to her emotions, she was torn by her excited feelings almost to the verge of convulsions. She clutched the arms of her chair and set her teeth together. In her incoherent attempts at thought, as she had delved among her graves, there had occurred to her the possibility that the father might sometime take his child from her. Now this fear possessed her like a physical epilepsy. Twice she tried to speak, and only emitted a gurgling sound as if strangling. He sprang toward her, but a sudden repulsion gave her self-control. She put out her hands as if to ward him off.

“Oh, my boy, my boy!” she cried, breaking out into hysterical sobs. “My boy, my boy!”

She wrung her hands, and twisted them together in fierce contortions which frightened Farnsworth; but she still would not allow him to approach her. She struggled for composure, writhing in paroxysms dreadful to see.

“Oh, my child!” she cried out, in a tone new and piercing; “no, no! not him! Oh, God! You cannot have my boy!”

Farnsworth retreated sharply.

He had not considered this. Indeed, so different was everything he found from everything he had expected, that whatever he had preconsidered was swept out of existence as irrelevant. He was confronted with a catastrophe in which it was necessary to judge unerringly and to act instantly, yet which paralyzed all his powers by its strangeness and its horror. He groped his way back to his chair and sat down, leaving the silence again unbroken save by her convulsive breathing and his deep-drawn sighs.

All at once a new sound broke in upon them, and the mother started to her feet.

“He is coming!” she gasped hoarsely.“I sent him away; but he has come back. He could not keep away, my beautiful boy.”

Her face was illumined with a love which wellnigh transfigured it. The door was opened violently, and the boy came rudely in,—a gaunt, rough whelp of a dozen summers, defiant, bold, and curious.

“I knew there was something up,” theyoung rascal observed with much self-complacency.“I knew when you sent me off to stay all night that somebody’s funeral was comin’ off, and I was bound I’d be here to see it.”

Neither the mother nor the father returned any answer. Ordinary feelings were so absolutely swept away that the woman did not even remember that she should have attempted to quiet and to excuse the intruder. Even the maternal pride which would usually have been troubled by the impression the child’s rudeness must make upon her guest was overwhelmed by the greater emotion which possessed her whole being.

Farnsworth had never been more keenly alive in every fibre of his being than at this moment. All his family pride, his refined tastes, his delicate nature, revolted from a kinship with the ugly, uncouth child who stood grinning maliciously upon his guilty parents. His impulse, almost too strong to be resisted, was to turn back and hide himself again in the world from which he had come,—to leave this woman and her loutish child in the quiet and obscurity in which he had found them. But he was nobler than his impulses and had paid already too dearly for rashness; the claim of a son upon the fatherwho has brought him into the world grasped his sense of justice like a hand of steel.

He rose to his feet firm and determined.

“Go away now,” he said to the boy quietly, but in a voice which even the urchin felt admitted of no disobedience. “I wish to talk with your mother. I will see you to-morrow.”

“Yes, Farnsworth,” the mother said pleadingly.“Go to bed now. I will come to you before long. That’s a good boy.”

The boy slowly and unwillingly withdrew, his reluctance showing how rare obedience was to him, and the parents were once more alone.

“You have given him my name,” were Farnsworth’s first words, as the door closed behind his son.

“It was father who did that. He said he should remember to curse you every time the name was spoken.”

“And you?” the other asked, almost with a shudder.

“I did not care. Cursing could not change things. Only I would not let him do it before the boy. I didn’t want him to know what sort of a father he had.”

In the midst of his self-abasement some hidden fibre of resentment and wounded vanity tingled at her words; but he would not heed it.

“I am not so wholly bad, Delia,” he said in a moment. “I came back to marry you. It will not change or mend the past; but it is the best I can do now.”

“It is no use to talk of that,” she returned wearily; “you and I are done with each other. Even I can see that.”

She was spent with the violence of her emotions, and only longed to have Farnsworth leave her. She was keenly sensitive now of the nicety of his attire, the contrast between him and her meagre surroundings. The shamefacedness of the poor overwhelmed her. She rose with uneven steps and trembling hands, and began to put things to rights a little. She snuffed the ill-conditioned candle, and trimmed the fire, whose drift-wood sent out tongues of colored flame. She set back into their usual gaunt and vulgar order the chairs which had been disturbed.

Farnsworth watched her with an aching heart.

“Delia,” he said at length, “come and sit down. We must decide what it is best to do.”

She obeyed him, although with evident reluctance. All the brief dignity which her elevation of mood had imparted had vanished now, leaving her more haggard and worn than ever. A faded, prematurely old woman,she sat twisting her red, stained hands in a vain attempt to hide their ugliness in the folds of her poor dress. Even self-pity in Farnsworth’s breast began to vanish in the depth of compassion which the sexton excited.

“Delia,” he said, “I must think for us both, and for the boy. He must be considered. For his sake we must be married.”

It was at once with a sense of relief and of humiliation that he saw how she shrank from this proposition. To have fallen from godhood in the meanest woman’s eyes is the keenest thrust at man’s pride. It gave Farnsworth a new conception that the gulf between them must look as impassable from her side as from his. He had thus far been too much absorbed in the sacrifices he himself was making to consider that all the desirabilities of his world would not appeal to her as to him,—that its very fulness and richness which so held and delighted him would confuse and repel her.

“It is of no use!” he exclaimed, starting up. “I must have time to think. I will come back in the morning. Think yourself, Delia,—not of me, or even of yourself, so much as of the boy. It is of him that we must have the first care. Nothing can muchchange our lives; but the world is before him. Goodnight.”

However different may have been the reflexions of Farnsworth and of Delia Grimwet through that long, sad night, their conclusions must have been in some respects identical, for when the former came to the house in the morning with the astonished clergyman the woman acquiesced without any discussion in the performance of the marriage ceremony. It was an occasion which the Rev. Mr. Eaton long remembered, and of which he told to the end of his life, filling out, it must be confessed, as time went on, its spare facts with sundry incidents, trifling, it is true, yet gradually overlaying the bare truth with a completeness which the clerical gossip himself, whose belief always kept pace with his invention, was far from realizing. The only thing he could with accuracy have told, beyond the simple fact of the marriage, was that when, according to his wont, he attempted to add a few words of exhortation and moral reflection, the bridegroom cut him short and showed him to the door with a courtesy perfect but irresistible, the rebuff somewhat softened by the liberality of the fee which accompanied the dismissal.

The boy during these singular proceedingshad remained in a state of excited astonishment almost amounting to stupefaction; but when the newly united family were alone together, his natural perversity broke out, and showed itself in its natural and unamiable colors. To the father the child’s every uncouth word and act were the most acute torture; and the mother, partly by woman’s instinct, partly from previous acquaintance with her husband’s fastidiousness, was to a great degree sensible of this. She made no effort, however, to restrain her child. She seemed to have thrown off all responsibility upon the father, and busied herself in preparations for the boy’s departure, about which, although neither had spoken of it, there seemed to be some tacit understanding.

The forenoon was well worn when Farnsworth came to the door with his carriage, for which he had gone in person.

“Come, Delia,” he said, entering the house.“We may as well leave everything as it is. I told Mrs. Bemis to lock up the house and see to it. Are you ready?”

“Farnsworth is,” she replied, seating herself in a low chair and drawing to her side the uncouth boy, who struggled to get free.

He broke in rudely, announcing his readiness, his joy at leaving Kempton, and his satisfactionat wearing his Sunday jacket, which to his father looked poor enough.

“But you, Delia?” her husband inquired, putting up his hand to quiet the child. “Are you ready?”

“I am not going.”

Whether it was relief, remorse, or astonishment which overwhelmed him, John Farnsworth could not have told. He stood speechless, looking at his wife like one suddenly stricken dumb. The boy filled in the pause with noisy expostulations, depriving the tragedy of even the poor dignity of silence. The father knew from the outset that remonstrances would not be likely to avail, yet he remonstrated; perhaps, for human nature is subtle beyond word, he was unconsciously for that reason the more earnest in his pleading. He would have been glad could this woman and her child have been swept out of existence. Already he had to hold himself strongly in check, lest the reaction which had followed his heroic resolve to marry Delia should show itself; but he choked back the feeling with all his resolution.

“No,” Delia persistently said, her eyes dry, her voice harsh from huskiness. “I’ve no place anywhere but here. It is too late now.I’ve more feeling than I thought, for I do care something even now to be an honest woman in the sight of my neighbors; and that’ll help me bear it, I suppose. Take the boy, and do for him all you owed to me. I should spoil all if I went. He is best quit of me if he’s to please you and grow like you. I’ll stay here and dig graves; I am fit for nothing else. I want nothing of you. I married you for the boy’s sake, and for his sake I break my heart and send him away; but I will have nothing for myself. The days when I would have taken a penny from you are long gone.”

She spoke calmly enough, but with a certain poignant stress which made every word fall like a weight. He did not urge her further. He held out his hand, into which she laid hers lifelessly.

“Good-bye,” he said. “As God sees me, Delia, I’ll do my best by the boy. I will write to you. If you change your decision,—but no matter now. I will write to you and to the minister.”

All other words of parting were brief and soon spoken. The boy showed no emotion at leaving his mother, as he had throughout exhibited no tenderness. He climbed noisily into the carriage, and the father and son, sostrangely assorted, rode together up the hill, past the stark meeting-house, and so on into the world whose seething waves seldom troubled, even by such a ripple as the events just narrated, the dull calm of Kempton; and to John Farnsworth it was as if the woful burden of remorse which had so long vexed heart and conscience had taken bodily shape and rode by his side.

Delia had been calm until the two were gone,—so calm that her husband thought her still half dazed by the excitement and anguish of the previous night. She stood steadily at the window until the carriage disappeared behind the grave-covered hill. Then she threw herself grovelling upon the floor in the very ecstasy of woe. She did not shriek, strangling in her throat into inarticulate moans and gurglings the cries which rent their way from her inmost soul; but she beat her head upon the bare floor; she caught at the furniture like a wild beast, leaving the print of her strong teeth in the hard wood; she was convulsed with her agony, a speechless animal rage, a boundless, irrepressible anguish which could not be measured or expressed. She clutched her bosom with her savage hands, as if she would tear herself in pieces; she woundedand bruised herself with a fierceness so intense as to be almost delight.

In the midst of her wildest paroxysm there came a knocking at the door. She started up, her face positively illuminated.

“They have come back!” she murmured in ecstasy.

She rushed to the door and undid its fastenings with fingers tremulous from eager joy. A neighbor confronted her, staring in dismay and amazement at her strange and dishevelled appearance.

“What’s come to ye, Dele?” he demanded roughly, though not unkindly. “When ye goin’ to put the box in Widder Pettigrove’s grave?”

She confronted him for an instant with a wandering look in her eye, as though she had mercifully been driven mad. Then the tyranny of life and habit reasserted itself.

“I’ll come up now, Bill,” she said.

And she went back to her graves.

THE END.