Dr. Lister remembered the astonishing maturity of Eleanor's mind.
"And I know what my eyes tell me!" cried Mrs. Lister. "Her eyes are Basil's eyes. It was her eyes Mr. Utterly was thinking of when he saw Basil's picture. I knew it. Her walk is his. She is Basil over again. For all these years I have had to look at her in church and on the street. I had begun to feel a little safe because I thought that now she might go away. Then this man came with his hateful inquiries."
"Poor Mary Alcestis!"
"I couldn't forbid her to go to college. I couldn't do anything but"—Mrs. Lister now broke down completely—"but watch and pray."
"And you never told me!"
"I couldn't tell any one about Basil. If you had known what a sweet little boy he was, perhaps I could have told you. And Richard—oh, Richard, Richard!"
"I heard Mrs. Scott."
"I went there to look for him."
"To the Bents'!"
"Yes, through all the lanes. It was quite dark and no one saw me. But I fell once; I was so excited and the lane was rough. Miss Bent and her mother were sitting together like innocent people, but he was not there. I said to myself that if he was I would go in and bring him home."
"But, mother, this about Richard is imagination run mad!"
"All the dreadful things I ever imagined came true. When he sits at the piano, he looks like Basil. It's something in them, it—Hark!"
Dr. Lister sprang up and went to the door. As he opened it the wind set the flame of the lamps quivering. There was a shrill, wailing sound.
"What is it?" cried Mrs. Lister.
"Nothing but the wind," answered Dr. Lister, his own nerves badly shaken. He came back into the study. "Mrs. Scott exaggerates till she lies. Suppose he has gone there to play for a few hours! They are both pupils of Thomasina's."
"Thomasina's ideas are all wrong—abouteverything," said Mrs. Lister. "She never had a brother or a child, she has had no experience. She puts a higher value on talent than on the Ten Commandments. WhereisRichard?" She sprang up. Her cry was lost in the breaking of the storm. "This very house is rocking!"
Dr. Lister drew her down once more beside him.
"At this moment we can do nothing but wait."
"I've gone through this misery before," said she piteously. "It isn't new to me."
Dr. Lister tried to persuade her to lie down, but she would not stir. The storm reached a climax, seemed to recede, and advanced in greater fury. Silently, hand in hand, the two waited.
By midnight, when the fury of the storm had abated, there was still no Richard. Mrs. Lister would not hear of going to bed, but sat stiffly upon the sofa in the study or wandered through the house. With a candle she explored the third story, venturing even into the tank room where the dim light cast flickering shadows on the brown unfinished walls and ceiling. She remembered with horror the old story of the bride locked into a chest and found mouldering after many years, and a more recent and sentimental tale of a young woman, who, discovering that she was merely the foster child of her parents, fell fainting to the floor before the old trunk into which she had been prying, and there remained until she was accidentally stumbled upon. Mrs. Lister did not climb the projecting beam and look into the tank—that madness she forbade herself.
She went into Richard's room and opened distractedly the cupboard door, then laid back the covers on the bed as she had always laid back Richard's covers, every night of his life.
As Dr. Lister sat beside her, he heard the whole story of Basil Everman, and his first puritanic disapproval of Basil's course gave place to protesting amazement.
"Something within him seemed to impel him to do wrong things," said Mrs. Lister. "It wasn't that he didn't love us. I am convinced that he loved us dearly.But he had to have his own way!"
"'Had to have his own way!'" Dr. Lister repeated the words to himself. His own way, which led him to "Roses of Pæstum" and "Bitter Bread"! If they had only let him have his own way, unmolested, or had helped him to it, poor Basil might not have turned into this unpleasant by-path.
Certainly the friendship between Richard and Eleanor Bent must end. Could there be any serious feeling between them? With this new light upon the girl's mental inheritance and with quickened recollection of her as she had sat in his classes, came deeper alarm.
There were moments when Mrs. Lister, in her fright and exhaustion, seemed to confuse Basil and Richard. Basil had been out in such storms; she had waited and watched for him all night long. He had been gone not only all night, but days and nights. Sometimes he had been almost within call, but he had insisted upon watching the storms. He was sorry to have troubled them, but he would not change any of his idle, purposeless ways.
She had tried and her father had tried to find a precedent for Basil, but in vain.
"I never heard of any one so strange and willful but Mr. Poe, until Mr. Utterly told those dreadful stories. And now Richard is—is like them!"
"Did Basil never announce his departures?"
"He knew that my father would forbid himwasting his time in idleness and wandering. He knew that my father would prevent him. So he simply went."
At one o'clock and at two o'clock there was still no Richard. The house assumed a different appearance after the customary hour for retiring. The high ceilings seemed in some strange fashion to rise, the walls to expand, the shadows to darken. Another storm approached, broke over Waltonville, and died away. Mrs. Lister, selecting a darkened window, looked out and saw that the Scotts were stirring. Her anger with Mrs. Scott almost suffocated her. Poor Mary Alcestis was not created to bear heroic passions.
Again and again Dr. Lister begged her to rest.
"You will be utterly worn out. Richard will not come any sooner because you wait for him."
"But where can he be?" wailed Mary Alcestis.
Dr. Lister determined that at dawn he would set forth, make a round of the village and all the neighboring walks, and then go to Thomasina Davis's and take counsel with her. If Richard had not come by eight o'clock, his disappearance must be made public. He could have no reason for going away and search could be no longer postponed. Having acknowledged this to himself, Dr. Lister became as much a victim of terror as his wife. There had never been a more obedient son; to attribute callous indifference to him was wicked. That he could thoughtlessly or intentionally have brought upon them such cruel anxiety was unthinkable. In his distress Dr. Lister began to tramp up and down the long study.
Then, at last, as dawn was breaking, Richard came home. In the study the watchers still sat with the shades drawn, not realizing that outside a gray light was already exhibiting the ruin wrought in the night. The smooth grass was strewn with branches and twigs, the cannas lay flat, gardens were flooded, and at the campus gate a tree lay across the street.
At the first click of the latch Mrs. Lister screamed, then held her hand across her lips. Nervous strength had forsaken her. But she gathered herself together and Dr. Lister, watching her, failed to see the entrance of the prodigal. Her form stiffened, the distress on her face altered to a stern and savage disapproval. She looked suddenly and uncannily like the portrait of the austere old man above her head. The night's vigil seemed to have removed the plumpness which disguised her physical resemblance to her father and her indignation destroyed the placid good nature which was her usual mood. She felt no weak impulse to throw herself upon her son's shoulder or to reinforce her maternal influence by any appeal to his affection.
When he entered, bedraggled, wet, black with railroad dust, he saw, first of all, his mother, sitting like a judge before him. He saw his father also, but his father seemed as usual a little indifferent to him and his needs, and even to this adventure.
"Mother!" he cried from the doorway.
Mrs. Lister did not answer. That the boy was amazed, that he could not account for their waiting presence was evident, but she did not help him tostraighten out the puzzling situation in which he found himself.
"You have been up all night!"
Mrs. Lister allowed the evident truth of this assertion to serve for an answer. She felt as though she could never speak, as though her throat were paralyzed, her tongue dead in her mouth. A lover, hearing his mistress explain her faithlessness, could have been no more powerless to express the sense of injury within him. There was a great gulf between her and her son, who till this moment had seemed almost as much a part of her as he was in the months preceding his birth.
Richard sat down inside the door.
"You didn't get my message, then?"
Still she did not speak.
"What message, Richard?" asked Dr. Lister. "We have had no message. We only knew that you vanished yesterday after breakfast."
"I found I had to go," explained Richard. Then he paused. His words sounded as strange to him as to his parents. "I wrote a note telling you where I was going and I fastened it to my pincushion where I was certain mother would find it. I missed the train home, and I came on the freight and it was delayed. I tried to telegraph, but the wires were down. Didn't you find my note, mother?"
"There was no note on your pincushion," said Mrs. Lister in a hollow voice.
Richard turned and ran up the steps. The two waiting below could hear him throw up the blinds.He descended in his fashion, three steps at a time, carrying two bits of paper in his hand.
"There, mother, they were under the edge of the bookcase! They must have blown there. I am so sorry that you have been anxious." His voice trembled, his father saw that he was almost exhausted.
Mrs. Lister did not lift the papers from her lap where he laid them. In the confusion of her mind, one intention was firm. She would not learn his excuse from any paper.
"But, Richard—" Dr. Lister, returning to the comfortable habits of every day, changed his right knee for his left. "Why did you go away and where did you go?"
Richard straightened his shoulders.
"I heard that Henry Faversham was to be in Baltimore for a few days and yesterday I saw in the paper that he had come. I knew that he accepted no pupils without having first heard them play, and I thought it would be better to see him in Baltimore than to make the long trip to New York. Miss Thomasina had written him about me and had given me a letter to him, and I expected certainly to go down and back in a day. Mother, of course she didn't know that I had gone without telling you! You know she would have told you herself rather than have that happen."
Dr. Lister cleared his throat.
"But, Richard, has it been our custom to communicate with one another by newspaper slips or written notes?"
"No," said Richard. He drew a deeper breath and looked his father in the eyes. "I couldn't have any argument about it, father. Ihadto go. There was no time for argument. I thought it would be easier for everybody if I just went. I am deeply sorry that you had this anxiety. I didn't mean you should."
Mrs. Lister saw the pleading eyes, heard the pleading voice, saw the even more eloquent grime and the white, streaked cheeks, but she made no affectionate sign of yielding, no tender motion to her son to come to that bosom which had thus far been a pillow for all his troubles. Hereditary motives were no less strong in her than in her son.
"Please, mother!"
"You'd better get a bath and go to bed."
For the sake of saving his life, Richard could not have kept his lips from quivering.
"When did you have anything to eat, my boy?" asked Dr. Lister.
"I'm not hungry," answered Richard steadily.
"But how lately have you eaten?"
"Not very lately," confessed Richard. "I didn't think much about eating yesterday." For an instant his face was lightened by pleasant recollection. "I'm really not hungry. Please, mother, don't bother! You ought to go to bed; you're more tired than I."
Mrs. Lister paid no heed to Richard's protests. She went to the kitchen and filled a tray and carried it upstairs. When he came from his bath, he found it there and ate, like a criminal in his cell.Then with a long sigh, he lay down. He threw his arm round the unused pillow beside his own on his broad bed and smiled. He heard for an instant heavenly harmonies, then he was asleep.
Even now that Richard had come home, Mrs. Lister would not lie down. She changed her dress for her usual morning apparel and put away the remains of his breakfast which he had placed on a chair outside his door, so that 'Manda might not suspect the strange doings of the night, then she went into the study. Dr. Lister lay on the couch. When she entered, he opened his eyes for a second, then closed them again, and she sat down and waited. In a little while, as though the tremendous disturbance of her mind was transferred through the still air to his sleepy brain, he opened his eyes wide and sat bolt upright.
"Yes, yes, my dear! What is it?"
Mrs. Lister made no apology for any telepathic means by which she might have awakened him. It was his business to be awake.
"This thing must be settled, Thomas."
From the vague borderland of sleep, Dr. Lister tried honestly and vainly to understand just what must be settled.
"What thing, mother?"
Mrs. Lister gave him a look in which astonishment and impatience were mingled.
"Richard can't have anything to do with this girl; he can't play with her, or see her, or talk to her; it isn't decent or right."
"You mean he must be told about Basil?" Dr.Lister remembered now the events and revelations of the night.
"It must be stopped. Everything must be stopped. Our child must do what is right."
The revelations of the night seemed to Dr. Lister like illusions.
"You are sure of all you told me, mother?"
"I am sure."
"Do you know where they went after they left here—the girl and her father, I mean?"
"We heard it was a little town in Ohio called Marysville."
"You never caused any inquiry to be made there?"
"Oh, no!"
"Basil wasn't with them when he died, was he?"
"No."
"We can't do anything at this minute. We'll have to learn whether Richard has gone any farther than to play the piano a few times with this young lady and I'll find out about these plans and intentions of his."
"His plans and intentions!" repeated Mrs. Lister.
"He's old enough to have them, my dear. I think we'd better let him have his music, don't you?"
Mrs. Lister gave her husband another long, level, and astonished glance. Then she sought her own room.
Richard came downstairs for lunch, white and with dark-rimmed eyes. But he was clean and his eyes shone. Faversham had accepted him, had said he would be glad to have him. He had sentmessages to Miss Thomasina; he had said a hundred things which she must hear at once.
"He talked about her as though he were in love with her," thought Richard whose thoughts ran in one channel.
Faversham had played for him, had talked about Beethoven and John Sebastian Bach. Faversham had heard and had torn up his small compositions and had put them into the wastebasket, smiling.
"You don't want those to appear in collections of your works, my boy!" he had said.
Richard would not have exchanged places with the Queen of England, or the Czar of all the Russias, who still held enviable positions in those days, or with any great character of history past or present. As for the future, he intended to be one of the great characters.
And there was sweet Eleanor, waiting, perhaps even at this instant, for him to come up the little walk.
If he could only tell his father and mother now about Henry Faversham and all the things that he had said! He must make them see that music was the breath of life to him; that he must be a musician, could be nothing else.
But he would not make them try to see now. His mother's features were too tense, her disapproval too evident, his own voice too tremulous. He would stay at home in the early part of the evening and explain to them, persuade them. Now he must find hungrier ears than theirs.
As Richard pushed back his chair, Mrs. Lister'seyes sought her husband's, and thus prompted, he asked his son, a little unwillingly, where he was going.
"I am going to Miss Thomasina's."
"And after that?" Mrs. Lister was not quite sure whether she had asked the question, or whether he had announced his plans in defiance.
"Afterwards I am going to play duets with Eleanor Bent." He did not mean to say exactly that. In both him and his mother forces were operating which carried them farther along the path appointed than either had any intention of proceeding. Here, to Richard, was another subject upon which there could be no arguing.
"Eleanor Bent plays very well, and she has the finest piano in Waltonville, the only piano really, except Miss Thomasina's. It is a young and strong piano"—Richard smiled pleasantly—"without a tin mandolin inside it like the Scotts'. I wish you could hear it, mother."
He waited for a second for an answer, but no answer came. Into his face rushed a flood of brilliant color. Cora Scott had never made her case plainer, never betrayed herself more helplessly. He turned and went out of the room and upstairs quickly.
When he came down, Dr. Lister called him into the study.
"Richard, you have caused your mother and me very grave anxiety."
"I know. I'm very sorry and I told mother so. I didn't mean to, and nobody can regret it more than I do." He could hardly wait to be gone.
"I'm going away for a few days, and I should like you to stay with your mother."
"Why, of course!"
"I mean that I should like you to stay here at the house."
"All the time!" gasped Richard.
"Yes."
"What for?"
"Suppose we say that it is to show your mother that you are really sorry."
"But I can show her that without staying in the house! When are you going?"
"At four o'clock."
"Then I can see Miss Thomasina before you go."
"It is after two now."
"But I must, father!"
Dr. Lister had never so loathed managing other people.
"You'll be back before I start?"
"Yes."
Richard flew across the campus and down the street. His father often made trips away in the interest of the college, but he did not often go so suddenly. Richard remembered that his mother had planned to accompany him to Pittsburgh. Was he going to Pittsburgh now? Why didn't she go too? Was she staying at home to watch him?
Miss Thomasina, he heard from Amelia, had gone away. Now he could see Eleanor. Then he groaned. He could not rush in upon her and off! Turning homeward he found his father completing his preparations for departure.
"Where are you going?"
"To Baltimore, then to Pittsburgh."
"I thought you were going to Pittsburgh, mother!"
His mother looked at him reproachfully. Did he not know that she never left him?
"No, darling," said Mary Alcestis. "My place is here."
For three days Richard roamed like a caged creature from room to room. An impulse to immediate rebellion soon spent itself. His intentions had not changed, his position was not to be receded from, but the necessity for a new step was not yet pressing. He would wait, he could afford to wait for three days, reckless and unconsidered and foolish as his promise had been. He did not remember that Eleanor might be unhappy.
In the meanwhile he would make his plans. He walked up and down or sat at his window chin on hand. When Mrs. Scott came within his line of vision he made a childish grimace in her direction. She came no nearer than the common walk which led from both houses to the college gate, being entirely satisfied with her recent visit to Mrs. Lister.
Richard thought of writing to Eleanor, but promptly abandoned the idea of substituting a cool and unresponsive sheet of paper for a glowing cheek. He had inherited none of his Uncle Basil's facility with a pen. He must tell her everything, except that he had had to steal away and that he was received like a returning prodigal, and he must watch her as he talked.
It occurred to him after the first day that his father might have a really good reason for requiringhim to stay with his mother. Could she be suffering from some dangerous and treacherous disease and for that reason need constant company? The possibility frightened him and he went at once to find her.
Mary Alcestis sat at the window of her bedroom, her little sewing-table beside her and a sock of Richard's stretched over her hand. Thus placed and thus occupied, she forgot for short periods her misery and with it his. It was difficult at best for her to put herself in the place of one who had experiences alien to her nature. Her large, sweet face now beamed upon her son. Richard, she was sure, would soon see, if he had not seen already, the blessedness of doing that which was exactly right.
"No, darling, I am not sick," said she. "There is nothing whatever the matter with me."
Richard read his mother's mind. She need not think that he was yielding, that he would ever yield—there should be demonstration of that immediately upon his father's return.
He took from his desk-drawer those neat notebooks which his mother admired without knowing their contents and turned from page to page. Here were his first transpositions and here his first exercises. How often he had worked at music when Greek and mathematics were supposed to be his occupation, until transposing had become much easier than reading Greek and until musical phrases stood for distinct ideas. Here were simple compositions, hymns, little tunes, and more elaborate exercises in counterpoint, worked out and agonizedover by him and Thomasina, whose knowledge of harmony had been acquired because of his necessities. Here were sketches for greater works—his eyes glowed. Concerto, symphony, opera—his ambition was boundless. Weeks had passed since he had looked into his notebooks and in the meantime he had changed. His long conversation with Faversham, his new emotional experience, made all that he had done thus far seem puerile, undeveloped. He had now so much better plans! He studied his notes, covered sheets of music-paper with sketches, hummed a hundred airs, rewrote, and longed for Eleanor's piano. Faversham had opened undreamed-of vistas, and here he was doing nothing for three precious days which could never be his again!
Once he sat down at the piano. He lifted his long fingers over a great chord and let his hands fall—the result was a combination of tinkling and slightly discordant sounds, dying away with metallic echoes and even with a sharp wooden crack of the old frame. At the very end, he heard a gentle sigh and knew that his mother sat in the study across the hall. He longed at that to bring both hands and arms thumping down upon the yellow keys. It was a Richard far removed from the one who had once preached to the fishes.
Thomasina, to his keen disappointment, did not appear. The necessity for some one to talk to, the discomfort of repression, grew less tolerable. He went for the mail, his mother waiting for him on the porch, not with outspoken intention ofstaying there until he should return, but with every appearance to his mind of a jailer watching the short exercise of a prisoner. He stopped at Thomasina's door, but found that she was still absent. He met Cora Scott and answered her shortly, saying yes, it was a pleasant day. What he meant was that it was a long and hateful and intolerable day. Here was a heart aching for a word, here a mind which would have welcomed, cherished, and kept inviolate all confidences! Richard knew it and hated the heart upon Cora's sleeve.
That evening, the second of Dr. Lister's absence, black 'Manda sat herself down on the kitchen porch to rest before she went on her way to the cabins, and there she lifted up her voice in "I was a wandering sheep." Richard heard her from the front porch and sprang up from the hammock and went round the house. His clear and steady tenor took the melody from her, lifted it and went on with it, the deep tones of 'Manda proceeding undisturbed.
They sang one stanza, then another and another, 'Manda's "po' lamb" booming out. When they had finished, Mrs. Lister looked for Richard to return. She was almost smiling, the duet recalled so many blessed hours. But Richard did not return. He led off in "Hallelu," then "Swing low, sweet chariot." He sat down with 'Manda and an old-time concert began.
Suddenly the singers forsook religious themes. 'Manda's repertoire was not altogether that of the church; it included a variety of songs which Richard had up to this time never heard, mournful, uncanny,without intelligible words to express their burden of savagery, songs learned she knew not how long ago, unsung she knew not for how long. Mrs. Lister stopped her ears.
But that did not stop the sound. She went through the house into the kitchen and looked out. Richard sat on the upper step, a writing-pad on his knee, the light from the door falling on his bent head.
"Now, 'Manda, that last line once more. How perfectly extraordinary!" Mrs. Lister went back to her chair.
Cora Scott heard the singing clearly as she sat at her window and cried, and told her mother, when she came to her door, having heard also and being curious to know whether Cora heard, that she was very sleepy and had gone to bed. Her voice sounded sleepy.
Eleanor Bent, walking restlessly on a pretended errand to Thomasina's, heard and stood still in the thick shadow of the maple trees and listened. Richard was away, surely he was away! But here he was at home, singing! And his last word had been a promise to come again. He had taken her in his arms, had kissed her, and had not come back. Was he angry or offended? Had she said anything to hurt him?
At that instant all her frightened questions returned. It was in just such a black shadow that hideous, sodden Bates from the hotel had taken her mother by the arm. She ceased to hear Richard's singing, ceased to feel the soft breeze of the summer night, ceased to hear the sound ofvoices on the other side of the street which a moment before had warned her to go on her way. She heard that scolding, masculine voice out of the past, she saw again her mother's strange outbreak of anger. Was it what shewasthat had offended Richard? And whatwasshe?
Mrs. Lister went a second time through the house to the kitchen door.
"Richard, you mustn't keep 'Manda any longer. She'll be all tired out to-morrow."
'Manda rose heavily and tremulously. She had seemed to herself for the last half-hour to be a very different person in a very different place. Now she was once again only an old, homely, and fat darkey.
"Yes'sum, Miss Mary Als'tis," said she.
Richard followed his mother into the house.
"The old girl's got a lot of queer tunes in her head. I've written some of them down. Something could be made of them."
Mrs. Lister's heart sank.
In the morning Richard went again for the mail. This afternoon his father would come home, and then there would be an end to this nonsense. His evening's course was planned. He would go straight to Eleanor and would tell her everything. His fancy, restrained for the last few days so that he might not make himself too miserable, now leaped all restraint. He recalled Eleanor in her seat in the classroom, sought her out in her pew in church, dwelt upon her at her piano, adored her on the little porch in the evening light. He basked in each remembered smile, he counted each clustering curl.It was only four days since he had seen her, but he paled with fear lest some ill might have befallen her, or that some change might have lessened her regard. He must have her promise to marry him before he could go on with his work. He felt sharply impatient with this interruption to his steady course. Shut into the house a year ago with a cold, he had read the accumulated chapters of a serial story at whose hero's failure he had laughed to Thomasina.
"No Christina Light could drive any steady man off his track like that!"
Thomasina had smiled and had said nothing. He remembered the story now with irritation. But it had no meaning for him; he was going to have his Eleanor, he had her already.
Coming back through the hot sunshine from the post-office, he handed his mother his father's letters and sat down in the hammock with the papers and magazines. He glanced at the headlines of the paper and threw it aside; it was not a period when the news was exciting. Then he stripped off the covers of the August magazines. As he opened the first, he started visibly. He glanced at his mother and saw that she was occupied and his eyes dropped once more to the "Table of Contents" and rested there, his cheeks reddening. Here was Eleanor's story "Professor Ellenborough's Last Class," and here was another story, "Bitter Bread," by Basil Everman!
Mrs. Lister, looking up, met his astonished eyes and took instant alarm.
"What is the matter, Richard?"
"Why, mother, here is a story written by my Uncle Basil and reprinted! It is called 'Bitter Bread.' It is very long." Richard turned page after page.
She neither moved nor spoke.
"And at the beginning there is a note, telling about it. Listen! 'In his small output, Basil Everman may be said to have equaled Edgar Allan Poe in originality and power. An essay "Roses of Pæstum," a vivid descriptive poem "Storm," and a single story "Bitter Bread," which we republish, were originally printed in this magazine. They prove the extraordinary genius of this young man, long since dead. Basil Everman was born in Waltonville, Pennsylvania, and died in Baltimore at the age of twenty-five. His productions surpass in quality, we believe, all other productions of their time.'
"Mother, how perfectly splendid! Aren't you pleased?" Richard waited for no answer. "He wasn't so very much older than I. Mother—" He meant to ask questions, but respect for his mother's silence was bred into him. His head bent lower. "There is another story here and another note. 'We print in this issue another story from Waltonville, a contribution very different in character, but also exhibiting the promise of talent of a high order, "Professor Ellenborough's Last Class, by Eleanor Bent."'
"Won't Scotty champ his bit?" demanded Richard as he looked up boldly. "I wonder whatkind of a story Eleanor would write. I—" Richard meant to say that this was not the first knowledge he had had of her success, but he saw that his mother looked at him with fright and anger. "Mother, in the name of common sense, what is the matter with the people in this house?"
Mrs. Lister rose unsteadily.
"You have never before spoken to your mother in such a way, Richard!"
Mrs. Lister entered the door, ascended the steps, and lay down upon her couch. Richard, frightened and repentant, followed at once, and hung over her, begging to be allowed to wait upon her.
"Shall I darken the room, mother?"
"Yes, Richard, please."
"Shall I bring you a drink?"
"No, Richard, thank you."
"Shall I take myself downstairs?"
"Yes, Richard, please."
Richard ran down the steps.
"In six hours father will be here, then let us hope that sanity will return to this demented household."
Richard read "Professor Ellenborough's Last Class" and smiled; then he read "Bitter Bread" and was filled with awe. It was English and it was prose, but it was like the old Greek stuff that he had pegged away over for so many years. It made him see for the first time sense and beauty in the old Greek stuff. Perhaps he had been up to this time very stupid. He felt, with all his good opinion of himself, that even after a second reading of "BitterBread" he could not understand it wholly. Humbled, he took from the long line of texts on his father's shelf a familiar and hated volume and looked into it. He had never expected to look into it again, but now as he read ideas for music came into his mind.
While he read, he held "Willard's Magazine" on his knee. It was overwhelming, ennobling, to be connected with so great a man. He longed to read the story to his mother, to make her see in it what he saw, to ask a hundred questions about Basil. He reviewed all the facts that he knew; the locked room which had been Basil's; the conviction, early impressed upon him, that it was not to be entered, was not, indeed, a place where one would wish to be.
"I hope, when I am dead, no one will treat my room that way," said Richard. To die with work undone, with life waiting! How cruel! He wondered whether Basil had known that he must die. Shivering, he went out of the cool study into the sunshine.
Dr. Lister returned, as was expected, at four o'clock. He looked white and tired. When Richard met him with the word that Mrs. Lister was not well, he went at once to her room. There, weeping, she told him about "Professor Ellenborough's Last Class." What he had to tell made her feel no better. She said that she did not wish any supper; she would stay where she was, and when he had told Richard he should come back.
"Tell him at once," said Mary Alcestis as she hid her face in the pillow.
Together Richard and his father had a quiet supper. The table shone with its array of old silver, and upon the meal 'Manda had done her best. Both men ate heartily. Richard gave his father an account of the few unimportant incidents of his absence, but Dr. Lister gave in return no account of his journey.
"Mother was sitting on the porch when suddenly she said she didn't feel well and went upstairs. She wouldn't let me do anything for her. I think it was Uncle Basil's story which made her feel badly. I hope nobody will ever bury me like that! I don't even know what he looked like!"
When supper was over the two went into the study and there Dr. Lister closed the door. He took the chair behind his desk, and then, as though dissatisfied with that magisterial position, crossed the room and sat down by one of the low windows. Richard waited, standing by the desk, impatient to be gone, and prepared for some unwelcome command. Had his father visited his acquaintances in Baltimore and was he to be ordered to Johns Hopkins? He rejected this as untenable. His father would not treat him like a baby. Was it an ultimatum, favorable or unfavorable, about music? He trembled.
Several seconds passed before Dr. Lister began to speak, and he had in that time exchanged twice the position of his knees. So long was the silence that Richard gave expression to his impatience.
"Father, the queerest air of mystery pervades this house. Mother is not ill; she is offended withme. She will scarcely speak to me. I made an entirely innocent remark, and off she went. If I have done anything to bring this about, I am sorry and I'll try to correct it. If my speaking about Uncle Basil hurt her feelings, I'll never do that again. But I can't be treated like a baby."
Dr. Lister blinked.
"Sit down, Richard. It is nothing that you have done that troubles your mother. It is a condition which has risen without your will entirely."
"I have an engagement this evening, father!"
"I'll not keep you long." Dr. Lister paused again, this time to steady his voice. He had had no knowledge of disappointed love from his own experience, Mary Alcestis having fallen like a ripe peach into his hand, but he could imagine the discomforts of the situation.
Richard found a seat in a corner of the sofa. His heart beat a little more rapidly and he was puzzled by his father's gravity. He seemed to see the edge of a cloud, as yet no larger than a man's hand, but none the less ominous.
"I must tell you about your Uncle Basil, Richard."
"Well," said Richard, "go ahead. He's a very mysterious person to me so far."
"Your grandfather had two children, your mother and Basil. Upon Basil he founded many hopes and began early in his youth a most careful system of training so that he should waste no time, but should become what Dr. Everman himself was, a careful and thorough student of Greek.
"A certain amount of instruction Basil listened to willingly, but his nature was not one which submitted itself to regular, long-continued training of any sort. He was a very handsome, talented lad, but a cruel disappointment to his father. He would not graduate from the college, refusing peremptorily to spend his time upon subjects in which he had no interest. He learned to read Greek fluently; indeed, he had a passionate admiration for the literary beauties of the language, but to his father's great chagrin he would go no deeper."
"Then he was not like Browning's grammarian who never got anything out of life but a funeral on a high mountain," said Richard gayly. Uncle Basil had nothing to do with him, the little cloud had disappeared.
"Finally, after some difficulty with his father, he left home."
"He was grown up, I suppose," said Richard. "There isn't much to do in Waltonville."
"He left home, as I have said, and after a year he died of malignant diphtheria in a lodging-house in Baltimore. His father's death followed close upon his. Thus your mother was in a short time bereft of father, only brother, and also of her home, since this house is the property of the college. I was elected to your grandfather's place, as it happened, and I brought her back."
Richard looked up at the picture of his grandfather. He was tempted to say, "Handsome old boy."
"Slowly your mother returned to a normalcondition of mind, but she has never recovered from the death of your uncle. Her father and mother were old, she and Basil were born late in their lives, and to him she looked for companionship. His death away from home, waited upon by strangers, almost unhinged her mind.
"After you were born she sat less in Basil's room in the third story; she began to take an interest in life; she became wrapped up in you, in caring for you, in making plans for your future. You were to do what Basil was to have done, to—"
"But it's not safe to plan what children are to do!" cried Richard. "You don't know what their plans may be. I'm sorry for mother, but I should think she would have known that!"
"That is true to a certain point. Your mother has feared that you would show some of those traits which distressed her in Basil, that intense absorption in matters which are to her the least important in life, to the utter exclusion of those which seem to her to be more practical and valuable. She does not understand persons of a different temperament, especially the temperament to which regular meals"—here Dr. Lister smiled a little at Richard—"and neat clothes and the good opinion of the public are adiaphora."
"I have always done what she wanted me to do like a lamb," declared Richard in a hard tone. He moved now toward the edge of his chair.
"You have always been an obedient son."
"What does mother consider matters of no importance?"
"In Basil's case it was art, literature, and music which she thought he set above everything else."
"Was my Uncle Basil musical?"
"To a certain extent." Dr. Lister wondered uneasily how he would ever approach the point of his discourse. "To go on, Richard—"
"Why did mother ever let me take lessons?"
"She thought you would in that way exhaust in your childhood any enthusiasm you might have and you would then give your mind to other things."
"Glory!" said Richard. Then, "I am very sorry for my Uncle Basil."
"He deserved some sympathy. We all do in this contrary world. I—"
"I cannot see why Greek should seem any more practical than music to my mother."
"Greek is the language of the New Testament."
"I cannot see what this has to do with me, anyhow, father. I have been in this house or on the porch for three days."
Dr. Lister began to speak with nervous haste.
"The history of your Uncle Basil has recently been opened by this man Utterly, who came here to find out what he could about him. Your mother was willing to give him only the most meager information. In this she was justified, for the young man seemed bound to prove that no one could have written as Basil wrote without having had the terrible experiences about which he wrote.
"When I urged her to tell him what she knew, she told me that for a year before his death Basil had been estranged; that his father had died fromthe shock of his death; that Waltonville had never suspected the alienation; and that she had always had an intense dread of its being suspected.
"After that I could only send Mr. Utterly on his way with the surface facts of Basil's life, hoping that the matter would end there.
"But now a new element has entered into the situation. Your mother had not even then confided in me the whole of your uncle's story. Her affection for him and her pride in the good name of the family had kept her lips closed. A day or two ago she told me more. This has a relation to you, but not, I trust, Richard, a very vital relation. I wish she had told me long ago. I have hoped it would not be necessary to tell you—perhaps it isn't really necessary now."
Richard's face expressed a mild curiosity. His father seemed to be making a great deal of nothing.
"When you were in Baltimore, Mrs. Scott came to see your mother and told her, with all her impertinence, that you had been spending a good deal of time with Eleanor Bent. Your mother said in response that Eleanor was a bright, pretty girl and that it was your affair."
Richard felt that now his father was a very direct and satisfactoryraconteur.
"That night, while we waited for you to come home, your mother told me the whole story of your uncle. He was attached, it seems, to Margie Ginter, the daughter of the tavern-keeper, and it was she whom he followed away. Your mother had comeupon them in the twilight, and had overheard a conversation between them."
"Mother is suspicious," said Richard.
"From their conversation she had every reason to suspect a close intimacy. At any rate, they went away and Basil went away. Sometime after his death, this Margie returned with a little girl."
Richard's eyes darkened. The cloud had increased in size. His father regretted the orderly way in which he had presented the facts, one after the other. He wished that he had said abruptly, "Eleanor Bent is your first cousin, and if there is anything between you it must end."
"Here she stayed, Richard."
Richard seemed still more puzzled than alarmed.
"You mean Mrs. Bent? But she is a widow, her name is Bent. What an atrocious suspicion!"
Dr. Lister raised his hand.
"Quietly, Richard! Your mother will hear!"
Richard's blazing eyes said that that made little difference.
"I know that she calls herself Mrs. Bent and her name may be Mrs. Bent. The point is that her daughter is like Basil." He quoted unconsciously from Mrs. Lister's sentences. "She walks like him, her coloring is like his, her eyes are his, and she has begun to show talent like his."
"I should need better proof than that!" declared Richard.
"I needed more proof also, and so I went to the little town in Ohio where the Ginters were said to have gone. That is where I have been. The fatherand daughter and a tall young man who was superior to them are dimly remembered. They didn't stay long. Marysville, it seemed, could not endure Ginter. I talked to the Squire."
"My Uncle Basil may have married her and afterwards she may have married a second time!"
"It is possible," agreed Dr. Lister. "I hope that is the way of it."
"Well, then, what is all this fuss about?" demanded Richard rudely. "Nothing is Eleanor's fault! Nothing can make any difference in my feeling for her! When I am able I mean to marry her."
"Richard!"
"Well?"
Dr. Lister described briefly the consequences of such an alliance. His remarks were made to fill time, to give Richard an opportunity to get hold of himself.
Richard clasped and unclasped his hands, fitting his fingers neatly together. He did not lift his eyes, he wished only to get away, but he did not feel certain of his power of locomotion.
"Mother had no right to let this go on!"
"She didn't dream of such a thing. Be fair!"
"Not dream of it! Did she suppose I could associate day after day with a girl like Eleanor and not love her?"
"She didn't know you associated with her. I hope you have come to no sort of understanding."
Richard answered only with a setting of his jaw. What he had done was his business. They shouldpry no farther; his heart was bleeding, but they should not count the drops. As soon as he felt certain of his knees he would fly.
Dr. Lister gave his body a little comfort against the back of his chair.
"I have no objection to your following music as a career, Richard, and I am sure we can win your mother over also. We want to do what is best for you—that is our chief desire in life. We will give you every possible opportunity here and abroad. What did Mr. Faversham say about your playing?"
Richard had now got to his feet. It seemed to him that he kept on and on rising. Insult had been added to injury.
"I have nothing to tell," said he with dignity, and so got himself away.
Surely there could have been no more remarkable coincidence than this proximity in "Willard's Magazine" of the work of Basil Everman and of Eleanor Bent. It seemed to Mrs. Lister that their connection must be blazoned thereby to the world, that the two compositions must bear on their faces evidence which the least discerning could interpret. Things done in secret could not be hidden; all her efforts of years to save the name of Basil from disgrace were of no avail before the power of God's law. She had given one painful, fascinated reading to the "Scarlet Letter"; to her, now, Basil and his companion were approaching the scaffold in the market-place for their final acknowledgment of common guilt.
After a few days she rose, white and trembling, from her bed and went once more into a suspicious world. She had faced it for twenty years, she would face it again.
But in spite of her terror, the coincidence apparently suggested nothing to Waltonville, brought back no damning recollection to any human being. The memory of mankind is short; that which she had desired was accomplished; Basil's swinging step, his bright eyes, his dark, beautiful hair were long ago forgotten; the step so like his, the eyes litby the same fire, the mass of dark curls recalled his image as little as did this youthful writing connect itself with his work. As a matter of fact, Eleanor's account of a semi-pathetic, semi-humorous college incident was not in the least like Basil's work, but to Mary Alcestis writing was writing.
Waltonville's response to Basil's story was varied. Mrs. Scott did not think it in any way remarkable; it reminded her, she said, of the productions of Edgar Allan Poe, and was therefore a little old-fashioned.
"He gave us long ago our fill of horrors," said she lightly. "And I don't think this is even as horrible as 'The Black Cat' and it certainly doesn't compare with 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue.'"
With Utterly's opinions as a stepping-stone she had leaped far above him, as one might leap from a supporting hand into a high saddle. She talked until her husband blushed, until his soul writhed. As for Basil Everman's story, she thought Utterly had been absurd to talk about a thousand dollars.
"I warrant that Mrs. Lister has searched through every old trunk in the attic," said she.
Dr. Scott stirred with one of his uneasy little motions, but made no other answer. He was having a restless, unhappy summer, the worst he had passed since his marriage. There was literally nothing in life which was worth while. He longed to go away, he longed for the companionship of those with kindred tastes and gentle ways, he longed for a sight of the foreign lands of which he dreamed. He stood sometimes and looked about his housewith its frivolous and worthless gauds; he thought of the bill for Mrs. Scott's outing, postponed a little this year beyond its usual date, and then of how simply one could live in Italy for a springtime.
Italy!—He took a book from his shelf and opened it.
"A city of marble, did I say? nay, rather a golden city, paved with emerald. For truly, every pinnacle and turret glanced or glowed, overlaid with gold or bossed with jasper. Beneath the unsullied sea drew in, deep breathing, to and fro, its eddies of green wave.... It lay along the face of the waters, no larger, as its captains saw it from their masts at evening, than a bar of the sunset that could not pass away; but for its power, it must have seemed to them that they were sailing in the expanse of heaven, and this a great planet whose orient edge widened through the ether. A world from which all ignoble care and petty thoughts were banished, with all the common and poor elements of life. No foulness nor tumult in those tremulous streets, that filled, or fell, beneath the moon; but rippled music of majestic change, or thrilling silence. No weak walls could rise above them; no low-roofed cottage, or straw-built shed. Only the strength as of rock, and the finished setting of stones most precious. And round them, far as the eye could reach, still the soft moving of stainless waters, proudly pure; as not the flower, so neither the thorn nor the thistle, could grow in the glancing field. Ethereal strength of Alps, dreamlike, vanishing in high procession beyond the Torcellan shore; blue islands of Paduanhills, poised in the golden west. Above free winds and fiery clouds ranging at their will;—brightness out of the north, and balm from the south, and the stars of evening and morning clear in the limitless light of arched heaven and circling sea."
Dr. Scott sighed and took down another book, then for hours he was dull to the passing of time. Sometimes he was able to lose himself in dreams. But when he woke his house was all the more intolerable and even his study offered no balm. Late July brought Walter for a visit and Walter seemed more than ever worldly, smart, progressive, and intolerable. Cora sat in her room silent and white-faced. Sometimes she read for a long time from one of her padded poets. Mrs. Scott longed for Atlantic City and complained about the Listers.
To Dr. Scott the story of Basil Everman exhibited all the cruel sadness of human fate. His imagination was fertile and he reconstructed Basil, an alien spirit in the Everman house. His speech was not the speech of Puritanic theology, his ways could not have been the ways of Mary Alcestis. He was so soon a ghost, wandering forlorn, his work only begun when life was ended! Dr. Scott meant to talk to Thomasina Davis about him—she surely would remember him.
He saw no reason why "Bitter Bread" should not make a little book. Would the Listers think of him as the editor for such a volume? So happy an event was hardly, in this disappointing world, probable; nevertheless, though he knew himself to bereckoning without any host whatever, he began to put together editorial words and phrases. Then, remembering Utterly, who had a certain right as a discoverer, he ceased dreaming.
Mrs. Scott thought Eleanor's story poor and called attention to the fact that she had taken Dr. Green's office as a model for untidiness, at which he laughed immoderately. He said that Eleanor might use himself or his office as a model at any time or to any extent she wished.
"Undoubtedly she has some kind of a pull," was Mrs. Scott's next comment.
"Pull?" repeated Dr. Scott nervously.
"Yes, influence over the editor," explained Mrs. Scott, "pull" in this sense being a new usage adopted from Walter. "Perhaps a financial influence. They seem to have money."
Thomasina Davis, when she opened her copy of "Willard's Magazine," grew pale; then she put it aside and went to walk up and down her garden. It was a long time before serenity returned to her countenance.
Later in the day she went to the Bents' to congratulate Eleanor. It was probable, she thought, that no one else in Waltonville but Dr. Scott would say anything to her. Eleanor looked ill and troubled, not as one would expect a rising author to look, and her mother looked even more distressed. They sat on the porch with Mrs. Bent watching her daughter anxiously, from the background, the dark circles under her eyes telling of sleepless nights.
"You ought to take Eleanor away for avacation," advised Thomasina. "There is no place superior to Waltonville, but you have to go away sometimes to realize it. Perhaps she would like to go somewhere with me."
To Thomasina's astonishment Eleanor burst into tears, and rising, overwhelmed with mortification, went indoors.
"She ain't very well," explained Mrs. Bent, who was overwhelmed also. "Please do excuse her, Miss Davis. She has studied hard and she has practiced too much since she got her piano. That is, she did, but she don't now."
"Perhaps she ought to see Dr. Green."
"Perhaps." But Mrs. Bent's forehead did not smooth itself out at the suggestion. Her anxieties tightened about her daily like a coil of wire long ago flung out and now being wound closer and closer.
Thomasina said nothing to Mrs. Lister about Basil's story. They had never talked about him, for though they had been intimate companions, Mary Alcestis had shut her out with every one else from her grief. She believed that Thomasina had thought even when they were children that she did not love him enough, was not always amiable with him. Not love Basil! It was because she had loved him so dearly, so desperately, that she had tried to watch over him, to lead him, to admonish him. A woman who had never been really in love, who had never married, who had never had children, who had always maintained even toward Dr. Lister an air of mental equality, could not be expected toknow the height and depth of love which Mary Alcestis knew. Thomasina, for all her bright mind and all her knowledge of many things, had had little experience of life's realities.
From others the Listers had comments in plenty. "To the relatives of Basil Everman, Waltonville, Pennsylvania," had come to be a familiar address to the postmaster. Editors wrote asking whether there had not been preserved other compositions of Basil Everman. They would welcome even fragmentary notes. Could not anything be found by searching? Dr. Lister went to the attic and opened the little trunk and took the Euripides and the Æschylus down to his study. He laid his hand for an instant on the upper drawer of the old bureau where Basil's clothes were packed, but did not open it. These clothes should long, long ago have been given away or burned.
A few old friends wrote to Dr. Scott for information about his distinguished fellow citizen. The story was to be followed in "Willard's" by "Roses of Pæstum" and "Storm." It promised to be fashionable to reprint old material. Dr. Lister heard nothing from Mr. Utterly, but imagined him swelling with pride and heard his sharp, high voice going on interminably about the rights of the public in all the details of an author's life.
Richard sat about quietly, holding a book in his hand, but not reading. His first experience with pain appalled him. So this was the world, was it? this was life? Was this dull shade the real color of the sky, this heavy vapor the atmosphere? He couldnot reconcile so malevolent a trick of fate with any conception of benevolence. Presently he began to resent his misery. He had done nothing to deserve this pain.
To his side, as he sat in Dr. Lister's study or on the porch, his mother made frequent journeys.
"Dinner-time, Richard," said Mary Alcestis gently. "Fried chicken, Richard," she would add hopefully. Or, "'Manda has just finished baking, Richard. Would you like a little cake? It would please 'Manda, Richard." Or—now Mrs. Lister's heart throbbed with hope—"Would you like to have the piano tuned, Richard?"
To all these suggestions he returned a polite, "No, I thank you, mother." No tuning or feeding could help either the piano or Richard now.
Once he turned upon his mother with a question.
"Mother, do you mean to say that during all these years, you and Mrs. Bent have never exchanged a word about—this matter?"
"She came up to me once on the street with her little girl," confessed Mrs. Lister tremulously. "But of course I couldn't talk to her there—or anywhere!"
"What did she say?"
"She said she wanted to talk to me about Basil."
Finally Mrs. Lister yielded her citadel.
"Richard, your father and I have been talking about music. We think that when you get your clavier with your Commencement money, we had better get a piano also. Father thinks I should go with you to Baltimore and that it would be well toask Thomasina to go too. You could have it to practice on now, and then it would be here when you came from—from New York, Richard."
Richard made no answer.
"Would you like that, dear?"
Richard laid his book on the table before him. He remembered the things which had been said about music, about art, about him! He laid his head down on his arms.
"A grand piano, Richard!" said Mrs. Lister, appealingly. "Papa thinks—"
"I would like to be let alone!" said Richard. "That is all I ask."
But Mrs. Lister had not yet made the hardest of her sacrificial suggestions. She was grieved by Richard's response, but she had determined to bear anything.
"I am thinking of that young girl," said she timidly.
"What young girl?" asked Richard with a warning savageness.
"Of Miss Bent. I don't like you to seem rude to her. I don't suppose she knows anything about her history. I can't believe she does. Perhaps you might make another call on her—with Thomasina. I am sure she would go with you if you would ask her. There would not be anything strange in it. Then you would go away and it would be—over. You will have new scenes."
In answer Richard simply looked at his mother. He believed that her mind was affected by long brooding over his Uncle Basil; thus only could herbehavior and her conversation be explained. To embrace Eleanor Bent, to stay away from her for days, and then to call upon her with Thomasina Davis! It was, indeed, a fantastic scheme.
Presently he went away. His father's sisters sent once more from St. Louis an urgent invitation and to their quiet household he was persuaded to go. Mary Alcestis composed a letter saying that he had not been well and that he did not care at the present time for gayety. Before mailing the letter she wrote another saying that he had lived so entirely with older folk that it was good for him to have gayety and go about with young people. When she had finished this letter the possibility of a western daughter-in-law disturbed her. In the end she destroyed both letters and he set out unencumbered by directions.
Casually in Dr. Green's office Dr. Lister asked about the marriage of first cousins and Dr. Green reached into the irregular pile of "Lancets" behind him and dragged out a copy, sending thereby the superincumbent stack to the floor. Upon it he did not bestow a glance.
"There, read the pleasant catalogue! Deaf children, dumb children, children malformed, children susceptible to disease, children with rickets, no children at all. I can give you a dozen articles if this doesn't suffice."
Early in August the Listers went to call upon Thomasina. In her living-room there was a single dim light, only a little brighter than the moonlight outside. The rest of Waltonville whose roomsblazed, wondered often how she made her parlor so restful, so comfortable to talk in. From the garden through the long doors came the odor of jasmine and sweet clematis and the heavier scent of August lilies.
She had been walking in her garden and when she came in to meet her guests there appeared with her a slender young figure in a white dress. Eleanor had come to show that she was not a fool, that she could talk sensibly and not burst out crying. Her heart had changed from a delicate throbbing organ into a hard lump, but her eyes were dry.
At sight of Eleanor, Mrs. Lister drew closer to Dr. Lister, who looked at her in return as sternly as he ever looked at any one. Thomasina asked at once about Richard, where he was and how soon he would be at home. Mrs. Scott had come to her with her story, and Thomasina, concealing her surprise, had said that she saw nothing unsuitable in such a friendship. In a few hours she ceased even to be surprised, she felt only an aching envy for youth and happiness. She did not share Dr. Green's opinion that youthful marriages were suicidal. But something evidently had gone wrong between Richard and Eleanor. Could Mrs. Scott have made trouble between them!
Mrs. Lister told where Richard had gone and said they did not know when he would return.
"He is going to New York late in the fall," she explained. "He is going to be a musician."
Thomasina's arm felt the throb of Eleanor's heart.
Before the Listers had found seats, the knocker sounded again. Now the Scotts arrived. This was the evening that Dr. Scott had set as the limit of his boredom. Things had grown no better; they had, on the contrary, grown worse. But when he had set out, Mrs. Scott announced her intention of accompanying him, and she was now at his side, effervescent, sharp-voiced, and more than usually trying to her husband.
Eleanor lingered, feeling awkward and unhappy. She wished to be alone with her own thoughts of Richard, alone with her never-ending effort to account for his silence, his departure without a good-bye. Perhaps he would write to her! The possibility made her happy for a second. She waited a pause in the conversation so that she might go home, but none came. When Dr. Green arrived, the talk grew more rapid and the opportunity seemed farther away.
Of the hard feeling which she had exhibited against Eleanor, Mrs. Scott gave now no sign. She spoke of "Our budding authoress" with whom she said she had had little opportunity thus far to become acquainted. How, she asked, with her sweetest expression, did one write? She drew a picture of Eleanor sitting before a ream of paper, laying aside finished sheets with machine-like regularity.