Date: 1894-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: New England; Short Stories; family life; Social Life and Customs
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Public domain worldwide.

FRAGMENTS

MADELINE YALE WYNNE
(1847–1918)

MobileRead Edition
2021

A tiny collection of three short stories, retrieved from magazine archives.

Madeline Yale Wynne (September 25, 1847 - January 4, 1918) was an American artist, teacher, writer, poet, and philanthropist.

She is mostly known for her small oeuvre of supernatural stories, and for her involvement in the arts and crafts movement in the early nineteenth century.

These stories were first published 1895 ~ 1903. This book is in the public domain worldwide, because the author died more than 100 years ago, and contents were published prior to 1925.

CONTENTS

- To The Delight of the Mandarin
- Ending on a Half-Note
- Aftermath

TO THE DELIGHT OF THE MANDARIN

“Tell me, dear, when shall it be?”

“In the spring.”

“Spring? That is a very indefinite time. My spring, for instance, begins in March. Shall we set it for the first of March? Or why not advance our spring this year, be a law unto ourselves, and begin our spring with the new year?”

“Oh no! People pay bills and settle obligations on that date; don’t let us mix ourselves up so early in those matters. Not till May.”

“May! Why, that is midsummer, not spring.”

“You don’t remember that last year, when we decided to go into the country on the first of May, you exclaimed, ‘The first of May! Why, that is midwinter!’”

“Circumstances alter seasons, says the old proverb. You promise, then, that it shall be in January?”

“No, in May; May or nothing, you bad boy.”

“As you will, and as I must. March is not a bad month.”

“I said May.”

“April?”

“Not March, not April, but May.”

“Thank you, dear, for so much,” said he, kissing her hand. He had been playing with her rings as he had stood pleading with her for an earlier date. It had begun with his trying to measure her finger for a plain band; afterwards he had slipped her rings on and off the smooth fingers.

She had said May or never, and he acquiesced reluctantly. He kissed her hand as a tribute to her power as arbiter of his destinies; then he drew her to him, placing the seal of his love on hair, eyes, and mouth.

And so the date was settled.

“I suppose we are to accept the dinner invitation at cousin Fanny’s tomorrow, and the other one from the Glenharts for Friday?”

“Yes, I suppose so. It is nice of them, and we must be victimized a little for society’s sake.”

“Yes, and in turn next year we shall be doing our duty to other young engaged folk, who will accept as ‘victims;’ shall we not, Mrs.—”

“Sh-h-h! Not till May, you know,” said she, putting her hand lightly before his face; and he did tender homage to it again.

“Good-night, and God keep you,” and Tom Lane went out into the night, with a heart that thumped out an ecstatic rhythm for his feet; and Laura Bracebridge sat down by the fire to spin long thoughts which reached from this moment to the altar, and beyond into misty, indefinite probabilities, dotted here and there with realities. She met dressmakers early on the way to the altar, and then bridesmaids, and then the church, and flowers, and friends, and the wedding march; and she saw a bride walking up the aisle. Then the vision became more diffused — was it Europe, or California, or where? And then—

She had for some time been slipping her rings up and down her fingers, till gradually they noted some deficiency, and telegraphed it to her brain. She looked at her hand in an abstracted way; half of her mind was still projecting itself into that long future. As her thoughts came back into the present, a pucker gathered between her eyebrows. She looked puzzled. She held her hand stretched out before her, gazing at it in an uncomprehending way; then she glanced at the other hand, and held the two spread out before her. Where was her emerald ring?

She certainly had had it on that evening. Had she been upstairs and taken it off while she had washed her hands? No; she felt sure she had not been up since dinner. Had she dropped it in her lap? She rose and brushed out her dress. The smooth black silk whished under the down-strokes of her hand: the ring was not there. It must have dropped on the rug; she scanned that all over, to its utmost limit; then she rose and rippled a wave across it. The ring did not glisten on its black surface; but the fur was deep — it may have found its way down into the very depths. She lifted the end of the rug, and held it high over her head and shook it. The pungent odor of the warm fur stifled her, but the ring did not drop out; it was not there. Neither was it on the carpet: she searched carefully from the fireplace to the window where Tom and she had stood while she held out for May against his pleadings. He had then been playing with her rings, she remembered. It must be somewhere. All over the room she searched carefully. Could it have dropped into the fire? No; she was sure it could not by any possibility have done so. She had sat down by it only after Tom had left, and the stool she had sat on was fully five feet from the fire. How different the fire looked now to her! It seemed to glow so cruelly, as if it could, given a chance, devour her emerald — yes, even her engagement ring; but that was still on her finger — the emerald was gone.

She could not believe it; she again mentally reviewed all that she had done that evening, and brought up at the same place: the ring was gone. She had not been upstairs; she had not dropped it in her lap nor on the rug; she had not dropped it anywhere. Why! Tom had taken it, of course, as a foolish joke! But how unlike him! Whimsical he certainly was in his imagination, but a practical joke — it wasn’t in him! And what a stupid, vulgar joke! Her face was scornful at the very idea. She would write to him at once — no, she would not write, nor speak of it. She would not lend herself to be a part of so tasteless and trivial a joke. She would say nothing to him about it; let him have the ignominy of explaining it to her and returning the ring.

But had he taken it? Impossible! — and the search began again, from fire to rug, and then to window. She shook the curtains and felt along the window ledge. There was no ring there. She called the maid, and told her to search every corner of the room for the ring early in the morning. What could she say to the servant if it were not found? And then, if Tom should return it and say it had been taken for a joke — she would have to fib. How intolerable! She could not sleep for the cruel humiliation of the thing. It had vulgarized the whole evening. The keenest sense of humor could not enjoy such an admixture of sentiment and buffoonery; and up and down, here and there, went her mind, trying to find some lurking-place for the ring, rather than in Tom’s keeping.

Tom sent a note the next morning asking her what dress she meant to wear to Fanny’s, so that the flowers could bloom to match.

She answered hastily — she was sorry afterwards — “Please do not send flowers tonight;” and then, after a moment’s pause, she merely put her initial, “L.” He ought to have spoken of the ring, she thought.

Tom came at seven; she was ready to go, but she was not looking very well. Tom was tender and solicitous as he helped her into the coupé — too kind to ask her if she were not feeling well, for he had that chivalrous sort of nature that could forbear even the showing of his sympathy by words. He had ventured to bring some violets, “just for a whiff of sweetness,” he said, as he fastened them to the strap of the carriage. Laura did not wear any flowers that evening: he noticed it with surprise.

The violets filled the little space with perfume. Laura spoke rarely. Tom was puzzled; it hardly seemed like embarrassment, but more like coldness. Laura felt the constraint of her own manner, but she did not mean to help him explain his stupid joke of the evening before.

The dinner was uncommonly dull. Laura scarcely talked, she was so piqued because Tom had not spoken of the ring. Tom did valiantly; but a man cannot do duty for two.

Tom’s cousin Fanny said to her husband afterwards that she didn’t see why some persons’ engagements seemed to make the path to the altar so thorny.

“We didn’t sulk when we were engaged, did we, Frank, you trump?”

“No,” replied Frank. “If you held trumps, why should you have sulked?”

“Egotist!” said Fanny. “Go and see the baby in his crib, but don’t you dare to wake him.”

Tom was more and more bewildered on the way home. Laura was almost haughty. There was no chance to mention the plans for the wedding; in fact, the wedding spirit was swept away, or wrapped in impenetrable mists. He took her hand for a moment in the hall at parting, and tried to look into her eyes (the eyes are the first fortresses to be stormed); but she turned her head, and said simply, “Good-night.”

He was for a second speechless with amazement; then setting aside the ridiculous formality of her manner, he said, “Laura, my beloved, don’t condemn me without a hearing.”

She turned and looked at him. A smile was beginning to blossom round the corners of her mouth, though under it was a determination to make him feel his want of tact in the manner of his jokes.

He did not speak, but stood smiling at her, thinking now that the ice was broken, she would tell him what had been the matter. Swift messages of love were passing from his eyes to hers.

They stood so for a perceptible space of time — he expectant, she waiting for him to speak. Then her face began to cloud before his: why didn’t he speak? She had nursed her grievance till she could not open the subject. He was merely expectant; he looked as if nothing stood between them but the word “come,” to be spoken by her.

“Well, dear?” he said at last, with a rising inflection.

“Why don’t you explain?” asked she, forcing herself to speak. She would yield that much.

“Explain what? I will explain if you will tell me where your sober thoughts have been straying this evening. I can’t follow you without some clue.”

“The emerald ring.”

“The emerald ring? The — emerald — ring?” repeated he slowly, as if to get some inner meaning from the cabalistic words. “That mystifies me more than ever. You will have to enlarge upon it a little. Is it a game of twenty questions?”

He was still smiling: the atmosphere Was clearing; she was going to tell him what had been the matter; and then there would not be any more matter at all.

“How stupid!” she exclaimed impatiently.

Then both were silent. Her voice had been more than impatient; it had been censorious.

She turned away again, as if for a final good-night, and said, “Unfortunately we do not seem to be gifted with the same sense of humor.”

“You shall not leave me,” said he, half playfully, half urgently detaining her by taking hold of her wrap. “What is it all about? What is this dreadful thing that I have done? What has come between us? Don’t send me off in this way. Tell me, dear one, and don’t hold me at arm’s length. If I have offended, it has been unwittingly or clumsily — by way of a joke, as you have intimated. But surely you can pardon me, I can make amends. You do not want to make me suffer for something that I am sure I can set right if you will only give me a chance?”

She was angered at his forcing an explanation on her. She had wrought herself up to the highest nervous tension, feeding her own doubts by construing his silence to be a part of the poor joke, and interpreting his remark, “Don’t condemn me without a hearing,” as a partial admission of something that could be explained by him after he had won her forgiveness, for he evidently was surprised at the depth of her disapproval.

The whole thing was intolerable. It made her tingle with shame, and being detained by his hand seemed to bring the matter down to the lowest level. It was outrageous I She turned hotly and said, “I wish you would return my emerald ring, and then leave me till I can forget this most unpleasant episode.”

The blood leaped to his face, yet still he did not appear to understand her. There was no mistaking the scathing tone of her voice, even if the words had not been insulting. Suddenly he remembered himself as a boy, sitting with the rest of the school before the master, while he had arraigned them all in the name of some boy who had wantonly abstracted the weight from the school clock. At that time his was the only face in the entire bank of upturned physiognomies which had had guilt written plainly on it in red waves of self-consciousness. And yet he had been utterly innocent, never till that moment having heard of the deed.

Tom felt that his face was now carrying the same false impression. The acute moment had passed in a flash. He was stung by this very remembrance into speech. “I have no idea, Laura, what you are talking about; but the matter is too grave to be discussed here, standing where we may be overheard. We must go and talk it out in the drawing-room. It almost seems as if you had placed things now beyond the power of explanation.”

He turned the gas up to its fullest as he spoke, and seated her where the light was full on his face and on hers.

There was something rigidly formal in the act. He had thrown back the front of his overcoat and pulled the lapels down, as if to meet some foe all cap-a-pie and without shirking. His mouth was set, and his eyes had a slightly pale look, as if the fire had gone out or deeper down.

The senses of both were keenly alive. The storm at the center of each being was no longer dissipating itself in flashes; it was gathering into ominous strength. She saw not only his grim, fortified face, but in her curiously alert state she saw behind him, on the table a little to his left, a Chinese mandarin with its delicately balanced head. Tom had hit the mandarin with his arm by chance, and had set it into its monotonous nodding. Its smile and its narrow slits of eyes moved up and down in agonizing placidity. Laura felt as if she should burst into laughter when she saw it, but there was a clutching at her throat that made it ache, and she looked away into the fire.

Tom watched her. She was pale and set of face and attitude. Her very antipathy toward the whole thing had driven her into a tenacious acceptance of the worst construction of everything. She felt that all Tom had said had been trifling and quite compatible with the theory that he had taken the ring for a joke, and that now, driven to bay, he was going to deny it.

Possibly no two persons in the whole world had ever woven around themselves a more complete misunderstanding; and certainly, no two were ever more completely unfitted to extricate themselves. And the mandarin went on nodding, nodding, nodding, just beyond Tom, with its eternal smile and glittering eyes.

“Laura, will you tell me what is the matter?”

She looked up. The mandarin maddened her, and brought to her again all the miserable littleness of the circumstances. In a passion of anger she said,

“You took my emerald ring off my finger last night … and … well, that is all.” How could she go over with him all the mental agitation? He surely could understand all that. He had the ring; let him set it right — if it could be set right.

“You think I have taken your ring, and kept it for a joke these twenty-four hours? You think that of me? You believe that I could have been with you and planned with you our future life together, and at that sacred moment I was purloining your ring, as a joke? And you do not admire my taste in jokes? You are quite right; it certainly would be unpardonable and in the most execrable taste; even to imagine the thing is beyond my comprehension. May I consider myself dismissed?”

Laura bowed her head, and the mandarin kept on nodding and smiling, while the light glinted on the narrow, slit-like eyes. Tom went out into the night.

After this crisis in their affairs, Tom and Laura both suffered. Each bore the trouble and developed under it characteristically. Tom went grinding on at his life like a machine that has been jolted out of the true, but not demolished. The cog-wheels impinged and made a jarring as the motion of life went on, but the machine worked.

Tom was a lawyer, and had won for himself an Opportunity; and that is so much more than many lawyers ever get that it had justified him in begging Laura to set a day for the wedding. His opportunity was now apparently all that he had left to him out of the wreck of his engagement. He went to work with a dogged determination not to let the machine stop till the opportunity had been hammered into his own particular success.

If he carried about with him galling memories and indignant protests against his lot, he did not ask for sympathy, or reveal to anyone the circumstances which had so altered his matrimonial plans. He accepted in silence all the rumored blame that attached to him, and ignored the tacitly proffered sympathy with a grave face and non-committal manner.

Laura broke down for a while after her first full acceptance of the situation. There was a very short time during which she was not seen in society, but this was before any rumors of the broken engagement came out.

She had dismissed Tom that evening with a silent bend of the head, the mandarin with its bland smile and glinting eyes confirming the decision by nodding in continued suave approval. There had been a moment of keen pain as her lover left the room. It was as if she had been struck by a bullet in the midst of a battle; it hardly counted at the time; it was the coming to her senses that racked her and tore her to the very center. It was the long days of cruel adjustment that counted; the mental convalescence when she took up her life with no heart for it, no work before her, — only the dreary commonplaces of an aimless existence. The only thing she retained unshaken was her belief in Tom’s folly.

She had put all the force of her rather limited nature into her love for Tom — or possibly, to be more accurate, into her love of her love for Tom. It had not made her nature any broader, but it had determined its direction. A belief in marriage was her social creed. Her imagination had been satisfied, but not stimulated, by her engagement to Tom; her ambitions had been sufficiently gratified by his opportunity, which his nature made a guarantee of success.

In her love she had never gone outside of herself. It was her love, her joy; and now it was her grief and suffering. She could not see beyond or through or over the blank wall of suspicion she had built around herself. The conviction of his fault grew with her grief, and embittered while it augmented it. She magnified and embellished the flagrant sin of the vulgar joke. Tom had desecrated the holiest moment of her life, and then, driven to bay by the sense of her scorn, he had retreated under a pretended ignorance of the cause.

Of course, never for an instant did the loss of the ring play any part in her tragedy. It was the loss of her ideal — the violation of her sense of what was fitting, reverential, at a sacred moment in her life. She saw no other solution of the matter. The ring was gone. Tom and she had been the only persons in the room that night. Tom had been slipping the ring off and on, and that was the last that was seen of it. Oh! she knew all this by heart. She had only to start the thought, and on it would go till it brought her round to the standstill conviction: Tom had taken it, for a joke — and then he had refused to stand by his act.

Laura’s mother had accepted “poor, dear Laura’s” version of the affair. Laura had told one friend about it — only one friend — and of course, this friend had really never told anyone else; but everybody knew that it was something about a ring. Some said that Tom had given Laura a so-called diamond engagement ring; then on investigation, consequent upon adjusting the setting, it had proved to be no diamond, but paste.

Someone else had heard that Tom had insisted that the engagement ring should be an opal surrounded by diamonds, and that Laura was so very superstitious that she returned it, and Tom had vowed that he would not allow her to be so weak; and so the opal had justified its evil power, and the engagement was broken. Still another version was that some two weeks after Tom had given Laura the engagement ring, the bill for it had been sent to her, as it could not be collected from him.

In the months following Tom was not invited to the places where Laura was ostentatiously made the heroine. Laura was dropped from the houses where Tom was in high favor. When ignorance or malice brought the two together, Tom withdrew and left Laura in undisputed possession of the field.

Tom changed somewhat during the year. His chin seemed to grow more square and more masterful as success followed upon his indefatigable labors. He was slightly heavier, too, and suggested the thought that he was a man who could order a good dinner at the club, and could also make a good after-dinner speech.

Laura’s family had a tendency to grow thin as time went on. Laura began to look like her mother; her cheekbones were more in evidence; her face had its old vivacity, but the expression was more restless than formerly, and her color had swifter fluctuations. She took tea and toast for two of her meals, also afternoon tea, after which she did not feel the strain of social life so much; and she was always very chatty and entertaining between four and six of an afternoon.

One day, as Tom was sitting down to his dinner at the club, a note was brought to him. He knew the writing, and the machinery of his being labored for a moment, as if the cog-wheels, which had begun to run pretty freely by this time, had received a new jar. He ate his dinner before he opened the note. After reading it he went across to a friend who was dining at another table, and asked him to come to his room. To this friend he told for the first time the history of the broken engagement, and then said: “I have received a note this evening. It is a year ago today since the affair. I have heard lately that she has engaged herself to a cousin who has always been in love with her, and that they are shortly to be married. I do not know how true the rumor is, but I fancy it is true, and that they are to be married in a few weeks. She sends me this note:

“‘Please consider this as a receipt in full for the ring which you took from my finger last spring. Laura Bracebridge.’

“If she were a man, I think I should kill her. One can’t strike a woman.”

“Go and see her.”

Tom went, and was shown into the drawing-room, where Laura and the mandarin were. There had been a mistake on the part of the new maid: Laura had given directions for her cousin Charlie, to whom she was not yet engaged, to be admitted. Tom was shown in, instead.

That afternoon, when Laura had come home, the maid had handed her three boxes, with a message to the effect that the dressmaker had herself left them at the house, and that she had waited an hour to see Miss Laura, as she had an important message for her, and that she would come again at nine in the evening. Two of the boxes contained dresses; the smallest of the three, about six inches square, had still another box inclosed, and within that was her emerald ring. Laura told her mother that Tom had sent back her ring without a word — probably because he had heard rumors of her engagement to Charlie — and she had written a note to him immediately, acknowledging the ring, because it was a relief to her to show him that she had been justified in her own attitude, and it seemed to close up all that terrible past year. “I was right,” she said. “He was and is unworthy.”

She had been right through it all.

Now they stood face to face, after a year of strangeness. He held her note in his hand, and said, “Will you kindly explain this note, Miss Bracebridge?” “It explains itself; it is only a receipt for my emerald ring which you returned to me this morning.”

“Your emerald ring!” he repeated again, in the same tone he had used a year ago that night. “I returned your emerald ring?”

“Miss Laura,” said the maid, parting the curtains that shut off the hallway, “the dressmaker wants very much to speak to you a moment.”

“I cannot see her this evening.”

“It is important,” was heard the voice of the dressmaker, and then it continued beyond the curtains out of their sight like the voice of a fate. “Tell Miss Bracebridge that I found her emerald ring between the dress and the lining, when I ripped up her black silk today. It was so valuable I did not want to run the risk of its being lost. So I brought it back to her myself. She will find it in the little square box.”

The outer door closed. The maid passed through the hall and disappeared. Tom and Laura stood facing each other. The mandarin’s head was still; his eyes gleamed. He was waiting for the next move.

ENDING ON A HALF-NOTE

“Joshuay, do you hear him a-whistling?”

“Let him whistle.”

Mrs. Joshua Bagg darned a large hole in a large blue woolen sock before she spoke again; she darned slowly and with integrity, and when the hole in the heel was filled with the even basket-stitch, she ran her needleful of blue yarn several times backward and forward over the adjacent thin places. Then she held up the sock with her hand resolutely jammed into the foot, and projected a knuckle or a finger here and there in search of a lurking hole or a slipping stitch.

“He’s been a-whistling that tune ’most all the time since supper,” said she, in her flat, even tones. “It worrits me considerable.”

No reply from Joshua. A fragment of a tune leaked down through a hole cut in the ceiling over the stove. The tune was familiar, but with a strange unlikeness to itself; it sounded like the beginning of a reel or some other dancing-tune, which through a lack of musical ability had been pitched on a minor key, and it always ended on a half-tone, such as only the utterly unmusical can accomplish. This slight deviation from the keynote was disastrous, for it necessitated the tune’s being begun at each repetition a little higher up; and as but half of the tune was at the whistler’s command, he had climbed rapidly up the scale some dozens of times, and had been obliged to begin back arbitrarily at some lower starting-point. It was after another of these fresh starts that Mrs. Bagg had spoken.

Deacon Bagg was reading the Naugatuck Farmer; he held the paper in both hands, and read very thoroughly down the page. He prided himself on being thorough, and he firmly believed every printed Word that he read, as if the stable quality he put into the reading added a dignity and authority to the printed page. Mrs. Bagg rarely spoke to the deacon when he was reading, for he had an impressively forbidding look at such times; but tonight she was perturbed.

“Joshuay,” said she, “I think something is going on; he’s whistled that tune for ever and ever so long, ’most ever sence supper. He ain’t generally given to whistling.”

There was a long pause before she revealed her gradually ripening suspicion.

“I sometimes think he’s got an idea in his head; mebby it’s a trip to the city. Tomorrow is his birthday.”

Deacon Bagg laid down his paper on his knees and took off his large spectacles, and sat looking in the fire. The Baggs being a well-to-do family, and he being of some dignity as deacon of the church, they sat in_ the front room in the evening instead of in the kitchen, as was the custom of their more simple neighbors at Baptist Four Corners. There was a fire in the Franklin-stove, and Joshua had his blue-woolen-clad feet on the fender; his shoes were set beside him. They were huge and cavernous, and very resolute-looking. Joshua was cast in a large mold; his under lip projected, and when he closed his mouth he looked as impassable as a fortress. At this moment, however, he had left his under lip hanging down, being uncertain in his mind as to exactly what the situation called for. Joshua was a just man and not hasty; he moved his toes from time to time in a tentative manner up and down in his blue stockings, partly in appreciation of the pleasant warmth, and partly in slow cogitative sympathy with his thoughts. Finally he spread them out in a determined manner, making his feet look for the moment like two huge blue woolen fans, while he said,

“I ain’t going to have him a-running down to the city, and that’s the end on’t.”

He drew up his under lip; it was like the closing of the drawbridge of a citadel before an expected attack.

Mrs. Bagg sighed thin sighs of depression, and yet of approval, from time to time; she knew that her place was by the fortress, whatever came.

“How old is he, anyway?” asked Joshua.

“Thirty-two come midnight,” said Mrs. Bragg, with precision: it was their only son they were speaking of, and her memory of every moment of his life was as accurate as it was detailed.

The whistling was not continuous above; it was interrupted now and then, as if the whistler was involuntarily trying to discover what was the effect of the music on the audience below. The deacon and his wife sat with attentive ears as if expecting some climax or development of a startling kind. They had as subtle an appreciation of the premonitory insurrectionary motif as if they had been in touch with the most modern musical theories.

There was a ceiling between parents and son, but he knew that they knew that something was going on in his mind, and they knew that he knew that they knew, although, except for what Mrs. Bagg had just said to Joshua, no words had been spoken. S0 strange is the tie of authority, especially parental. The whistling became more fragmentary; then there was a sound of a boot’s being dropped on the floor; then an interval with a musical interlude; and then the sound of a struggle between a boot-jack and an obstinate boot; then the thud of the conquered boot; then muffled movings overhead, and a creaking of the corded bedstead; and then a long silence.

Now Joshua arose, ponderously, and with great self-respect in every movement; he folded up his Naugatuck Farmer, and tucked it behind the vase of magenta-colored immortelles on the shelf. He moved his shoes further back behind the stove, and turned the heels outward so that they would be ready to his hand at early morning candlelight; then he disappeared into the bedroom that open ed out of the sitting-room.

Mrs. Bagg darned away on the blue stockings, with an occasional glance at the ceiling, as if she were keeping watch, or trying to study out the situation. She worked till the last sock was mended and carefully telescoped into its mate, then she darned her needle into the flannel needle-book that had been in use for forty years. After this she rose with a sigh, buried the coals, carefully brushed up the hearth, and lighting her candle, she turned out the kerosene-lamp and followed Joshua.

In half an hour she reappeared; she looked thinner than ever in her white gown, which was scant and short. She had wrapped her head up in a red flannel petticoat, being afraid of drafts. She went out to the kitchen and through it into the buttery, and tried the window to see if it was fastened; she also made sure that the outer door of the kitchen was locked, and then, after a moment’s hesitation, she took out the key, and going to the bread-jar, dropped it in; it tinkled against the earthen side, and Mrs. Bagg started nervously. Then she carefully climbed the stairs and paused for a moment at her son’s door; there was no sound inside.

She gently pushed it open and peered in. Everything was quiet, and the bedquilt was drawn snugly over the figure in the bed. The cast-off clothes lay in a heap on the floor, and the moonlight streamed full on the boot-jack. She went quietly back down the stairs, not hearing the smothered groan from under the tightly clutched bedclothes, nor seeing the violent deprecatory kick that disturbed the outline of the quilt in the moonlight. Joshua Bagg snored below with steady, self-respecting diligence, and Mrs. Bagg laid herself down; but she could not sleep. She got up again, and re-flanneling her neuralgic head, she pulled on her stockings, and again made the tour of the kitchen. Burglars had always been her only fear, but now another sort of danger seemed in the air. This time the barring of door and window must be done to keep someone from getting out, rather than to keep anyone from getting in. She knew that while it was not possible to prevent her son from unlocking what she herself had locked, yet the moral force of implied detention ought to have great weight, so she put an extra stick over the buttery window, and said to herself: “I ain’t brought him up through measles and mumps to have him going off now, not if taking pains can help it.”

The son had been restless of late. Someone had reported his having been seen walking outwith a girl, and he had been buying neckties lately out of all proportion to his needs — not that he did not have money enough, but he had not hitherto been in the habit of spending it Without due consultation with his mother. He was thirty-five years old; but what is age — looking backward! It seemed only yesterday that he was revolting against castor oil, and now he was revolting against authority; but was a parent’s duty less imperative for that?

The household slept.

At twelve o’clock,thirty-two years to an hour since his advent into this world, an insurrectionary young man rose from his bed; he was fully dressed, and in his best clothes. There was a resolute look in his face that strongly favored his father’s, though the chin had a backward slope in its bony structure that did not exactly carry out the suggestion of will that was conveyed by the slightly projecting lower lip. His figure was like his mother’s; in fact, as his shadow was cast on the white-washed wall of the hallway — for the moon shone full in at the window — this black likeness of himself looked like his mother’s figure with his father’s head on its shoulders.

He made his way very quickly to the kitchen, his boots in his hand; he expected to find the door locked, of course, but it startled him to find that there was no key in the lock. He got down on his hands and knees and hunted over the floor for it; but it had not fallen out; the key had been taken out. He felt curiously cold and warm at the same time. The familiar “Thou shalt not” of the commandments came to his mind, but with daring self-assertion it was trampled down and out.

He went to the buttery window; it was double-barred; and he read in this, as clearly as if it were Written, “Thou shalt not.” But what Was this hindrance, this message in signs from his sleeping parents. in the face of the fact that he had been for weeks planning this step — this twenty-four hours of utter freedom, freedom begun and never to be ended, the freedom that should so build up his courage that he could even say in Words, on his return, “I am no longer a child, and I will not be treated as one.” He had even practiced a gesture to go with the words, but had finally concluded that the words were enough in themselves. Now this meeting with silent resistance at the outset made him distrustful of himself; he put his hand up to his chin as if to strengthen himself where he was the weakest. It took only a moment for him to throw his long limbs over the shelf in front of the window and to climb out; the window locked itself behind him with a click, but by no possible means could he replace the stick over the sash; there it lay, convicting him, but of what? Of course they would find out that he was gone, and would know that he must have got out in some Way; but the stick lying there out of place seemed. to make his flight ignominious, almost felonious,Whereas in his imagination beforehand it had seemed glorious and independent. So much do trifles alter great issues.

He walked away into the night. How sweet the air was, how white the moon! how gravely the shadows of the trees lay before him in long bars across the lane! how strong he felt, how free! And everything was clean and calm before him, and only two sleeping old people behind him, and yet they had hitherto been all that there was between him and this large freedom. Why had he not before seen this way to happiness and manhood? It was as if he were entering a long, uninterrupted avenue of far-reaching delight.

It was one o’clock; the milk-train was just starting for the city. A young man asked the brakeman if he could get a ride; the brakeman winked, and a silver half-dollar passed from hand to hand.

Through the night the train rumbled and backed and made false starts and fresh beginnings, grinding out sparks and blowing black breath in the face of the moon, shrieking as it plunged under archways and around curves, while its long shadow played grotesque pranks on bank and tree or level sandy plain.

Two o’clock; the train rumbled on.

Half past two, and now it was side-tracked to let the night express go by.

Then from out of the rear end of the last car slipped a black figure, letting itself cautiously down on the cindered track; no eye saw the deed, so quietly did the long black shadow disentangle itself from the great bulk of the milk-train. The express flew by with a triumphant crescendo; there was a swirl of dust and cinders, enveloping the shadowy figure at the rear of the milk-train, which seemed for a moment to be lifted up and swept from the earth by the cloud of moving black. The express had passed, the milk-train began to bump and gather itself for a start, and no one noticed the backward-flying figure of one who, with bent head and forward-projecting shoulders, was speeding back towards Baptist Four Corners. Back, back, miles on miles through moonlight and over long stretches of ties barring his path like the rungs of an endless ladder, on between two silver lines that led into endless moonlit space.

His sloping chin had betrayed him. At four o’clock the next morning Mrs. Bagg arose, and looking out of her window she saw her son at the barn; he had milked the cow, and was washing down the old buggy.

Mrs. Bagg noticed that he had on his overalls, and it seemed to her that the clothes showing above the straps were those known as his “Sunday best.”

When she went into the kitchen she found the door still locked, and as she took the key furtively from the bread-jar, where she had put it the night before, she inspected it curiously, as if she expected to find some sign of its having been somehow tampered with. She went into the buttery; the stick Which she had put over the window Was lying on the shelf. She took that up and examined it closely. She made an errand out to the barn, and seeming surprised that her son was in his Sunday best, she asked him why he had his new clothes on.

He answered, laconically, “It’s my birthday.”

“Sure enough,” said she. And she made batter-cakes for breakfast, and set the honey-jar on the table.

They ate in silence, as usual. Mr. Bagg at last pushed his chair back, and announced to his son that he guessed they’d better “tackle the long medder and seed it down.”

All day they worked. Joshua’s lip was closed up tight — it projected like a shelf — but not one cause for discipline came up between father and son from morning till night. The son’s lesser lip was also closely drawn up. He had had his battle with himself and had lost — or gained — who knows?

Mrs. Bagg looked from time to time at the buttery window, and wondered if she had only dreamed that she had put the stick up over it the night before; but even if she hadn’t, what of the key in the bread-jar, and the door still locked as she had left it, and he at the barn? He must have got out at the window; but she said nothing to Joshua.

The deacon fumbled ostentatiously in his vest pocket after supper, and then, holding out a five-dollar bill, he said to his son: “There, take that, and spend it on yourself! I dun’no’ as I care if you go down to the city, if you want to.”

“Thank you, I don’t seem to care for it. I’m too old now for birthdays.”

Joshua did not close his lower lip for more than an hour.

As the vanquished hero climbed up the back stairs to his room he might have been heard to say, “I shall be glad anyhow when I do come of age.”

AFTERMATH

“Speaking of love,” said John, craning his neck to peer up among the branches of an apple-tree where two squirrels were keeping up a mighty chatter, “speaking — of — love,” he was now balancing his words unconsciously in unison with his motions as he adjusted to a nicety his aim of the apple in his hand. The moment arrived, and he “fired” the apple with a swift jerk; even while it cut through the air the squirrel-talk broke off, and two incarnate bits of motion bridged the chasm between the trees, then passed out of sight down the leafy highway over our heads.

“But nobody was speaking of love,” said I, “and it is simply ridiculous the way you men throw things at things. Women never want to throw things; it is purely a masculine inclination. Why should a squirrel suggest a missile to a man?”

“As I was saying,” continued John, unmoved, “speaking of love — for we may be said to be speaking of it now, mayn’t we?” he asked, meekly.

“Why, yes,” I admitted, “of love and men and squirrels.”

“Well, what I wanted to ask is this: is love a back number, has it gone out of fashion in the era that has come in on bicycle and on golf-sticks?”

“John, before we discuss that subject,” I suggested with dignity, “I wish to remind you that today happens to be the ninth anniversary of our wedding-day. Not that I would for a moment wish that insignificant fact to color your views; I only mention it as a coincident of interest.”

“Have you really been married nine years?” asked Susette, with mild wonder in her eyes; and how very long she made the “nine years” sound! I was not quite sure that this was an auspicious time for random views on life and love, for there was a something about the relations between Lewis and Susette that was as yet too intangible to be named, too tenuous to be put to the strain of even a far-off parallel of a suggestion. Someone has said that “engagements should not be pulled up by the roots to see how they are getting on,” and I thought of this as I answered lightly, “Yes, John and I have forged a chain of nine links; we are celebrating the event, this our smoke-talk under the trees.”

“For men must smoke and women must talk,” recited John, mournfully.

“How sweet the hay is!” said Susette, with her appreciative, informal little nose high in the air.

“Aftermath you should say,” corrected John.

“Rowan, isn’t it?” asked Lewis.

“What is aftermath but rowan, and what is rowan but hay?” asked Susette.

“Aftermath is second crop; it costs six dollars a day to get it in; we lose two dollars on every load. This is Jane’s pet economy; she invests her losses in more fertilizer; consequent upon that comes more hay, and therefore more loss every succeeding year. That is the true inwardness of aftermath.”

It is needless to say it was John who made this summary, and that I am Jane. Susette seemed to suspect that an effort had been made to get the subject of love decently out of sight, and to bury it in the hay that our Swede was raking up into cocks for the night. Therefore she deliberately set herself to bring us back to the subject, in order to prove her unconsciousness. “We may have changed our point of view regarding what is called love,” said she, “but I certainly think this generation takes a wiser and wider point of view.”

Susette is a graduate from two colleges. She is straight physically and mentally, but to my thinking she is much too flagrantly innocent of the fact that Lewis has been spending the very best part of his vacation between college and his professional studies in a minute and pains taking investigation of her nature, and she not at all on his list of prescribed studies, either. She, for her part, it seemed to me, had been deliberately and successfully baffling him in this elected, post graduate course.

John was bent just now on provoking a crisis, a most dangerous thing to do; I never want to be around when submarine mines are set off. Fortunately, John is so mercurial as well as impressionable that he often defeats his own aims; and possibly he had no definite end in view this time, for he said the next minute, “Lewis, you must be sure and come up here in June some time. I want to show you some prime fishing — fishing for bats.”

“For bats?’”

“Yes; it is great sport. They come bumbling round here by the hundreds in June. All you have to do is to throw out some lines from the upper porch there, use a nice bamboo rod, light and springy, with a reel, and—”

“Why, John, you know you never caught a bat in all your life,” interjected I, in one of my prosy moods.

“No, come to think of it, I don’t believe I ever did really catch one. They must be uncomfortable and uncanny beasts to handle; but it is not the catching that attracts, it’s the fishing.” I thought he winked at Lewis, but I am not sure — John is so very much of a child, even since his adoption of what he calls the silver standard as to hair and beard. He now went on to say, with the sportsman’s enthusiasm, “It’s great sport — early evening — half twilight — shoals of bats just getting their night-eyes on — breathless excitement! Oh, you must come up and try it, Lewis, though I warn you that Jane is quite right. I don’t know as I ever thought of it before, but we never did really catch a bat.”

“Love,” said Lewis, slowly, oblivious of this long interlude of fishing enthusiasm, “love needs favorable conditions. Women today are centering themselves on the things that do not make for love. This is true of all their interests. They have proved everything that they have claimed; they are exactly what they wish to be, and they inspire exactly the sentiment they say they wish to inspire. Love to them is a superfluity; in matters psychological as in matters economic, the supply and demand are co-ordinate. Have you seen anything like the old-time love lying round of late?” asked he, in a cynical tone, of John.

“Lots of it,” I answered, before John could speak.

“Give us a sample,” suggested John, in the slang way he delights in — he always insists that he knows better what he thinks when he hears his thoughts spoken out in everyday words and terms.

“Well, I was thinking, when I spoke, of Hilda, our red-headed Hilda; you know her story, John.”

“If it was on humble lines,” suggested Lewis, “it may have had some of the old-time flavor. I was thinking more of what we call educated classes. She probably was not up to the times.”

“Tell us about her!” exclaimed Susette, her enthusiasm growing as she purposely ignored every remark made by Lewis.

“Hilda was not young even when I first knew her; it was toward the end of her romance. I suppose she might have been thirty years old. She had wonderful red hair; I think it was that that recommended her to me — and afterwards I kept her because she wouldn’t go away. John, was her story a romance — old-fashioned love, as you style it?”

“I’m no judge; let us have it, and the others shall say whether it fits.”

“As I say, I particularly delighted in Hilda’s red hair. She was a note of Venetian splendor in our dismal, smoky city, and when we had occasion to move Yo another city to live I supposed, of course, she would have to be left behind; but she announced immediately that she was going with us, and, by way of making herself invaluable, she developed a wonderful ability in packing our duds; all of our gods, demigods, and skeletons were packed by her with great skill and dispatch, and at the other end of the route she redistributed these impediments, placing the gods in the niches and the skeletons in closets with surprising intuition. Thenceforth she managed the household. At this time I became aware of her extraordinary power in making friends; her Swedish contingent far outnumbered my own more modest and conservative assimilation of intimates.”

“Yes,” said John, “and all her friends seemed to be named Jung, or Yonson, or some other name with an interchangeable J or Y. She held regular täker fests, to coin a word, and our kitchen was too small to hold the numerous contestants. I didn’t care about the below-stairs names, but I resented being called ‘Yones’ and having ‘yems’ for breakfast; as I used to say to Jane, ‘her juse of the J ceased to be a yoy and a yoke.’”

“That is true; but her hair was a beautiful red, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, ’twas a fine color scheme, and I did not mean to discourage any interest Susette and Lewis here had begun to feel in her romance; you admit her speech was broken, now prove to us that her heart was broken also.”

“I can’t prove it — I cannot even give you the delightful quality of her story — that was only to be felt by one who saw her as I did one night in the firelight, standing against the dull blue of the portiere with the brass tray in her hand, her head thrown back and her hair shining like a halo. Imagine that, and you might possibly hear more than my clumsy words. ‘My fader,’ said she, in answer to a question of mine, ‘he had a bakery in Sweden; we not poor like I am here, and we no need to work for anybody; we have mens to work for us, we been rich and have blenty and we no need to work for anybody. My fader he make de dings in the bakery, and my mudder she been in de shop to sell de dings, and my sister and me we have blenty company all de time; we give blenty to eat and dey like to come all de evenings. One jung man, he named Carl, he come often and he sit and sit, and so I tink he mean to ask me to marry him, but he never say one word; I tink it been because. I so rich and he haf no money, so he not dare say nottings, but he yust sit and eat and not say anydings; he yust look all the time at me. One Christmas night we have blenty to eat and I tink now he speak, he stay so late, but he not speak; he yust eat and eat and look at me all de time. Den he get up and he say, “Good-bye, Hilda,” and he go away. I cry all dat night and tink him no good, why he not speak! But I t’ink he come back again some odder time, and I wait and wait; but he never come, and den we hear dat Carl he gone to America. So pretty soon I tell my fader and mudder I been tired of everydings and I go to America, and I come over here and I go to Baltimore, for I hear Carl he go dere. And den I get to know all the Swedes, and I ask everybody do dey know my Carl Yonson, and dey say, “Yes, he here,” and I look and look but I never find him. I go and I see very many Yonsons, but I do not find my Carl, and after a while I grow pale and t’in and I ’fraid I grow old, but I tink someday I see him soon, and because I not been rich any more, he speak. I been in Baltimore t’ree year and I never see my Carl. One night I go to see some gardens where dere been dancing and music and everybody go, so I tink now I find my Carl; and den yust as I stand on some high steps while my young man he go to get tickets so we can dance, I feel so as if somebody look at me behind, and I turn round quick and dere stand my Carl Yonson looking at me. I feel his eyes in de back of my head he look at me so hard, and nobody stand between us, and den my heart it go right up in my t’roat, and I feel so weak, for he look at me yust as he did when he come to our house and eat; den I t’row my head back so, and yust laugh at him. I laugh out loud at him.’

“‘Why, Hilda!’ I exclaimed.

“‘Yes, I yust laugh. I been hunting him all dese years, and when I find him I yust laugh at him; and he grow red in the face, den he turn and go away. I call to him, “Carl, come back, come back, I been looking for you everywhere,” but he never turn, he yust go away, and I never find him some more.’

“‘Never, Hilda?’

“‘No, I never see him some more. I ask everybody, and dey say he gone to Philadelphia, and den I gone to Philadelphia, and I get t’inner and I grow old fast, but he not dere. Den I hear he go to de West. I know many Sweeds and dey say, “Yes, you find your Carl out in de West,” so I go West, and I hear every where, “Carl Yonson, yes, he been here, but he gone somewhere else,” and I never find him now. I grow old, and I never find him.’

“‘Then that is why you wanted to come here with us?’ I said.

“‘Yes, de Sweeds dey all say Carl Yonson he been in de new city, but I never find him.’

“‘Why did you laugh, Hilda? I don’t see why you laughed.’

“‘I don’t know; I didn’t feel like myself; I just t’row my head back so, and laugh at him.’

“Now tell me, Lewis, what should you call the propelling power behind Hilda’s quest for her Carl, if it was not love.”

“Jane,” said John, “finish the story first.”

“Oh, of course; well, to be sure, Hilda married somebody else after a while. Nobody is consistent. She married frankly for a settlement; that was business, I admit. She herself said so. She didn’t pretend to any love; in fact, she was bent on a good investment; and it marks exactly my point and emphasizes the difference between love and business. I confess I tried to make her see her own romance as I saw it, but she couldn’t take the outsider’s view. She didn’t see what we may call the literary value of it. I suppose it was dead earnest to her. ‘I never find my Carl, so I marry the best I can,’ was the summing up of her experience. She made a miserable bargain, poor, red-haired Hilda, but she had loved.”

Our man Yonson had raked the hay up quite close to us during the time I had been telling of Hilda. He was so dull I did not believe he would understand what I said, even if he heard. He was making up the hay in cocks for the night and tying on some white nightcaps to keep the dew off. He was one of those dreadfully light, faded-out, blue-eyed Swedes, a faithful, colorless creature who had always exasperated me because his eyes were so inadequate. Of course his name was Yonson; most Swedes seem to have that name. Maybe that was why Hilda always was hearing of “Carl Yonson.” From behind me the Swede spoke quietly and in an unmoved way:

“Mrs. Yones, I been Hilda’s Carl.”

“You, you Carl Yonson!”

“Yes, I been Hilda’s Carl.”

“Really. And did you know that she followed you over to America, and that she is married now? And did she laugh at you when she found you in Baltimore?”

“Yes,” said Carl, simply. “Hilda she laugh, she laugh out loud, but I not know, till you tole me, that she been married. It will be a good ding that Hilda she marry. It will be a good ding if her man—”

Here Yonson paused to find an English equivalent for a Swedish idea that was in his slow mind. “It will be a very good ding for Hilda if sometimes her man he lick her, for Hilda she get too sassy sometime. Yes, it will be a very good ting if he lick Hilda.”

John lay back on the grass and frankly laughed, Lewis and Susette very considerately strolled away, after a glance at each other, and Yonson went off trundling his wheelbarrow, now emptied of the night caps, which gleamed in ghostly whiteness on slumbering, giant cocks. John lay at full length at my feet; night settled down solemnly between the hills, while the katydids’ synchronous chant filled the air.

“Jane,” said John at last, “love may be a back number. I do not know much about love; but isn’t it curious I found this little old French ring with a tiny little love-knot on it in my waistcoat pocket today, and now it turns out that this is our wedding anniversary.”

John was hunting for my hand in the darkness, and when he found it he slipped the ring on my finger — he had woven sweet-grass all through the true-lover’s knot while I had been telling Hilda’s story. So like John.