"I believe he has lied to me," said she. Her hands gripped the arms of her chair, her eyes seemed to be fixed intently upon objects outside her parlor. She saw Dr. Green and heard him speak; she saw also another figure and heard also another voice.
"I would like for you to choose a pie-anna"—why was it that the one suggested the other? Thomasina remembered Dr. Green distinctly in his queer, opinionated, misogynistic youth. Had he ever even spoken to Margie Ginter before she had returned to Waltonville? She thought of Eleanor, followed the lines of her body, the contour of her face. There was a line from brow to chin, there was a shapely nose, there was—but she could think no more.
She rose and walked up and down the room, her brain weary with speculation. After a long time she said aloud, "Oh,Basil!"
Pacing his quiet study, sitting before his desk, eating his absent-minded meals, lying sleepless in his bed, Dr. Scott waited impatiently. In another month school would begin, but school work had become routine which would take only his time and would not interrupt his mental processes. He had read the last of Basil Everman's compositions and had made complete and elaborate plans for their presentation to the world, even though Dr. Lister had warned him that Mrs. Lister's consent must first be gained. Dr. Scott did not believe for an instant that she would refuse. She would rejoice as any sensible person would in this late fame for her brother.
Already he saw before him "Miscellaneous Studies, Basil Everman," "The Poems of Basil Everman," "Bitter Bread and other Stories, Basil Everman," "Translations from the Greek, Basil Everman." The books would need no wide advertising to float them; they would come gradually and certainly into favor. They should be smoothly bound in dark blue, excellently printed on thick, light, creamy paper in large type, and on the title-page of each should stand "The Works of Basil Everman, vol.—, Henry Harrington Scott, Editor." He gave a half-day to deciding whether"Professor of English Literature in Walton College" should be added.
He saw before him his own sentences, few in number, rich in meaning. He wrote them down, some on slips of paper which he carried with him on long walks into the country or held in his hand in the twilight as he sat in his study. "Everman's style," he wrote, "combines the freshness and lightness of youth with the more solid qualities which belong to maturity. He ornamented dexterously the subjects whose impressiveness was enhanced by an embroidery of words and with equal taste pruned rigorously those passages whose truth was best set forth undecked." Here and there he underlined a word as an indication that it was to be further considered and its suitability scrutinized.
He placed Basil in the Everman house, saw him walking the streets and wrote a sentence which pleased him mightily. The sentence was to please poor Mary Alcestis: "The history of Basil Everman offers a positive answer to that problem about which there is and will always be frequent contention—whether the human soul finds within itself the material for such presentations." Basil Everman had found tragedy, gloom, passion in his own heart and in the literature which he read and not in his own experience.
He determined to quote passages which he had loved and cherished—cherished, it might well seem for this end: Basil Everman "sensed that old Greek question, yet unanswered. The unconquerable specter still flitting among the forest trees attwilight; rising ribbed out of the sea sand; white, a strange Aphrodite—out of the sea foam; stretching its gray, cloven wings among the clouds; turning the light of their sunsets into blood."
Another sentence he meant to use which was still new and whose applicability he saw as yet vaguely:
"She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands."
He considered the sources for the brief biography. There was Mary Alcestis, first and most important. There were, he hoped, letters. And there was Thomasina.
His delight in his work set the machinery of his mind into swift revolution. He recalled with satisfaction his short contributions to contemporary literature and got down the scrapbooks in which he had preserved them. Here was an admirable paragraph—there was one which should be recast. He read again the carefully preserved letters which he had received in agreement and commendation. When the works of Basil Everman appeared, Vreeland and Lewis and Wilson would in all probability write to him again. He was still not middle-aged;there might be before him deeper literary satisfactions than the editing of another man's work, extraordinary as that work was. He might see some happy day his own productions beautifully printed, beautifully bound, his own name in gold on dark-blue cloth—Henry Harrington Scott.
In the glow which pervaded his spirit, old feelings revived, feelings which had no connection with literary matters. He began to remember once more not only why he had married, but why he had married Mrs. Scott. He saw her blue eyes, unsharpened and unfaded; he saw her eager face; he heard—alas for him!—her siren tones of appreciation and admiration. He had not, he knew, justified himself in her eyes, but that should all be changed; he promised himself that she should think well of him, that he would still achieve that success which every woman has a right to expect in the man whom she marries. Even Walter—supercilious, prosperous Walter, jingling coin in his pocket—should think well of him. To Cora's opinion he attributed no value. But he anticipated more and more pleasantly the moment when he should tell Mrs. Scott his happy secret.
That his condition might become apparent to the sharp eyes which daily reviewed him, that it might require some cunning to conceal from his wife the aura of renewed hopes in which he walked, did not occur to him. If the evidences of excitement had been hers, if she had shown signs of interest in affairs unknown to him, he would have let her proceed, unquestioned and unmolested, glad in hissecret soul that he did not have to know. But Mrs. Scott's position was different. She planned a gayer August than ever before, and such an expression of countenance as that brought by Dr. Scott to breakfast could have been inspired only by some small literary success.
Had the work which he had done been paid for? Mrs. Scott had long since lost interest in successes which were not accompanied by money, and since she had heard from Mr. Utterly of the prices paid for promising stories, she had despised in secret her husband's receipts. It seemed to her that now he must have achieved something worth while.
In his absence on one of his long walks, she visited his study and turned over his papers. But he had left accessible no written word of his own, and Basil Everman's manuscript lay safely in Dr. Lister's desk drawer, awaiting Mrs. Lister's decision. She slipped out of their envelopes several letters, but found only a few small bills for books. Neither an invitation to write an article in exchange for a hundred dollars nor an actual check for ten dollars appeared. She frowned and for several days said less than usual. Then, Dr. Scott's preoccupation increasing, she pleaded general weariness and a severe headache and stayed in bed.
In the evening Dr. Scott went to sit for an hour in her room. She lay high on her pillows with a flutter of lace and ribbons about her, and he sat by the window, a pleasant breeze fanning him, a young moon smiling at him over the shoulder of the Lister house. The Lister house was dark and somber in thedeep shadow and its almost sinister appearance might have warned him to keep its secrets. But he was not warned.
Mrs. Scott talked about his work, about the drudgery of the classroom, about the dull boys and girls upon whom he wasted so many weary hours, about the pittance he received. She wished for him leisure, larger pay, opportunities such as he deserved.
"It is all you need to bring you out. I get angry at the conditions under which you slave in this dull town when you might take a high place elsewhere and become famous."
"You rate me highly, my dear," said Dr. Scott. Nevertheless he smiled.
"No, I don't," contradicted Mrs. Scott. "Here is Mrs. Lister's brother writing a few things and dull things at that, and having his name heralded through the whole world; and here is Eleanor Bent, a nobody, with her name in every one's mouth."
Dr. Scott looked out of the window. He had suffered—and blushed with shame for it—acute envy of Eleanor and her youth.
"You could do so much better! You are older and more learned and you have had more experience and more outlook on the world."
Dr. Scott glanced back into the room. His eyes settled themselves on the figure on the bed. If he could have seen Mrs. Scott clearly, he would have recalled the disillusioning years between his wedding day and this moment. But he saw in the dusk only the motion of a hand which seemed to brushaway a tear. This was the wife of his bosom, a part of himself!
"I am to have an enviable opportunity," said he slowly. "The Listers have asked me—that is, Dr. Lister has asked me—to edit and prepare for publication the works of Mrs. Lister's brother, Basil Everman."
"You mean that story and those other things!" Mrs. Scott's voice was flat, disappointed, angry.
"Those and many equally valuable compositions which have accidentally come to light after many years."
"'Accidentally come to light'!" repeated Mrs. Scott, with fine scorn. "Didn't I tell you they would ransack every chest in the attic after what Utterly said? Are they really worth anything?"
"They are magnificent," said Dr. Scott, trying to keep his voice steady. "They will form a notable addition to the literature of America, to the literature indeed of the world."
"Of all things!" With a vigor which escaped the notice of her husband Mrs. Scott sat suddenly upright. "Won't this town be surprised!"
"Oh, my dear!" protested Dr. Scott. "Nothing is to be said, nothing! It is all in the air as yet. Nothing is decided definitely. Oh, my dear, not a word to any one!"
"I am glad to hear that nothing has been decided definitely," said Mrs. Scott. "Glad, indeed! What have they offered you to do this work, Henry?"
Dr. Scott's whole body quivered.
"Offered me?"
"Yes; what have they offered to pay you?"
"We haven't said anything about pay."
"Were you going to do it for nothing?" Mrs. Scott's tone implied that exactly this particular lunacy was to have been expected.
"It is a very great honor to be asked," answered Dr. Scott nervously. "It will, I am convinced, be an opportunity, leading probably to other things."
"To other things!" repeated Mrs. Scott. "I want something more substantial than opportunities leading to other things. I am sick of honors without pay. Why, Utterly said he would give a thousand dollars for another story! A thousand dollars is almost as much as you earn in an entire year. They'll make a fortune, and they are well off already! I shouldn't be surprised if they could live without Dr. Lister's salary. And he gets five hundred dollars more a year than you do. If you charge them well, they'll think better of you. I'll warrant they're trying to get it done here because they think you'll do it for nothing and for no other reason whatever. I am pretty sick of the Listers anyhow. Here is poor Cora in love with Richard and encouraged by all of them since she was a baby and he running round now with that miserable Bent girl. I would make them pay well for every hour I spent on their work! They will make enough out of it, I'll warrant! Why, it is like finding money for them! I—"
Dr. Scott lifted his hand with an uncertain motion to his head. Thus might Samson have felt ofhis shorn pate when he lifted it from the lap of Delilah.
"Oh, my dear!" said he. "Oh, my dear!"
"I mean it all," insisted Mrs. Scott. "Every last word."
Then, to his unspeakable discomfort, she stepped from bed and came across the room and kissed him.
"I'd charge either by the hour for my work, or else I'd ask a high percentage on the sale of the books and have an iron-bound agreement to see the publisher's accounts. You cannot be too careful. This is the time for you to take council with Walter, papa. You have no idea how keen he is; you have never had patience with him or done him justice. I think you should send word to him to come here. He would be glad to make the trip for such a reason. You could go to see him, but if he came here he could talk to the Listers himself. He is certainly the one to make the contract. I do not see why you should trouble yourself with the matter at all."
Mrs. Scott took silence for consent, or at least for respectful consideration of her suggestions.
"You think it over," said she, as she returned to bed. "You will see that I am right."
Dr. Scott slept uneasily. He dreamed of impending avalanches and of being compelled to enter, not entirely clothed, into the presence of some august tribunal.
When he woke early on a cloudy morning, he lay for a while very still with his eyes turned away fromthe sleeping figure at his side. After a long time he rose quickly and, taking his clothing, stole into the spare room to dress. Something had happened to him overnight. A situation long suspended had crystallized, long dully seen, had become plain. Betrayed and cajoled, he had revealed a secret entrusted to him. He laid no blame upon his wife. He said, without bitterness, that he should have known, did know Mrs. Scott. It seemed to him—and herein lay the source of his misery—that his own moral fiber must have been gradually weakening or he could not have so failed himself.
When he heard Mrs. Scott stirring, he came into the room.
"I hope you feel quite well."
"Oh, yes!" She did not regret yesterday's strategy, but she was thinking that now yesterday's tasks were still to be done. "I think you ought to write to Walter right after breakfast, Henry."
Dr. Scott straightened his tall figure. His declaration of independence had been formulated.
"It is none of Walter's business. He is perfectly incapable of managing this affair. His instincts are those of the counting-house. He is to know nothing about it. If you speak of it to any one, I shall give the whole thing up, both the work and the money—if there is any money involved. My sense of honor will not allow me to proceed with it for a day."
Brush in hand, Mrs. Scott looked at him with amazement. Unfortunately she had never been spoken to in this fashion in all her married life.
"Do you think you've succeeded so well, Henry, that you can't take any advice?"
"I know better than you do whether I've succeeded or failed. I'm speaking of this particular instance, and what I say is this, if you breathe a word of what I have told you to Walter, or to any one, I give the whole thing up! Work like this is generally paid for, but I do not care whether it is paid or not. I should be glad to do it for nothing. Since you do care for money, you had better see that you don't lose whatever there is in it by talking about it."
He went downstairs, his knees shaking under him, but a heavenly sense of freedom in his heart. In the dining-room he found Cora standing by the window waiting for the advent of her elders. He had meant to talk to her, but this was not the time. He felt a sudden, keen pity for her white face and her drooping shoulders. She was so steady, so occupied with her own small concerns, so—if the truth must be told—dull; he did not think her capable of any grand passion or deep sorrow. It was not easy, he was certain, for her to bear her trouble under her mother's eye. But she would get over it, she was young. It might make it harder for her if he talked to her about it.
All day he hung about the house. Mrs. Scott was packing her trunks, but he was afraid that some one might come in. He was not yet quite as free as he thought. To-morrow she would be gone and he could breathe for a little while in peace. Then his sensitive soul reproached him. When atdark, Dr. Lister came to tell him that Mrs. Lister had consented to the publication of Basil's work, and he went to tell Mrs. Scott, she smiled from one corner of her mouth.
"Did you suppose she wouldn't consent?" said she.
As the days passed the friendly relations between Mrs. Bent and her daughter were not restored. Mrs. Bent looked at Eleanor furtively, cried when she was away from her, and redoubled all her self-sacrificing toil. The sound of a step on the porch made her shiver. She spoke to Eleanor and Eleanor spoke to her as though there were an ever-present danger of another breaking-through of the thin crust which masked a crater of seething emotion.
Mrs. Bent need not have feared that her daughter would open the subject which had led to so unpleasant a scene. No one who had the run of Dr. Green's library could fail to know that there were other forms of existence beside the conventional unions of Waltonville's married folk and Eleanor had, with youth's eagerness to learn the ways of a wider world, followed the lives of a few historical examples of other sorts of union. She had believed herself to be in this matter, as in others, broad-minded. But now her opinions had changed; a fearful possibility threatened her. She came to believe that her mother waited an opportunity to confide in her a secret no longer to be hidden and grown too heavy to bear alone. In her fright she avoided her mother, and when they were together interrupted with some foolishness each sentence which promised to be serious.
"I am sorry for her," cried Eleanor to herself. "I am sorry, but I cannot listen to her."
In the middle of a hot August afternoon she determined to go for a walk. If she went a long distance and came home tired and drank no coffee for her supper, it might be that she could sleep through the night. She had no goal in view; she would simply go on until she was tired and then turn for the long walk home. As she dressed she reproached herself for her weakness. She would persuade her mother to go away from Waltonville; it was said that time and new scenes cured troubles of the mind. They would go to a larger place where no one would inquire into their business or even know them.
"But I don't want to know anything about it!" said Eleanor to herself. "I don't want her to tell me! If she tells me I shall die!"
Standing before her mirror she brushed her dark hair with long, sweeping motions of her arm. Her eyes met their reflection.
"I am beautiful," said Eleanor. "There is some satisfaction in that."
Then her cheeks crimsoned. Neither her eyes nor her dark hair nor her height had come from her mother—from whom had they come? She gave up her intention to walk and threw herself face downward upon her bed.
"I will not hear anything about it," said she. "I will think only of going away."
But her fears were stronger than her will. Her mind traveled again its old round. There wassodden, debauched Bates, with his rude and intimate salutation; there was the impertinent freedom of Mrs. Scott; there was the appraising stare of Walter Simpson Scott; there was her mother's embarrassed unwillingness to talk about Basil Everman; there was also that strange voice which she had heard long ago, that voice which seemed to reprove and to beseech her mother.
"She is good!" cried Eleanor. "And I am wicked and hateful!"
Presently she was wakened by the opening of the door in the hall below, and she sprang up, deceived for an instant into thinking that Richard Lister had returned and was asking for her. Then she lay down, dizzily. The voice was not Richard's, but Dr. Green's older, deeper tones which asked, "Is Eleanor at home?"
When her mother answered that she had gone out, Eleanor closed her eyes. He had probably come to invite her to ride into the country with him. But she could not go; she could not bear the heat or the light or his bright eyes. Their expression disturbed her, had disturbed her subconsciously for weeks, the look of hunger which had brightened them when she had told him of her success with "Professor Ellenborough's Last Class" reminding her of the eyes of a caged animal, of strong feeling kept under, but there, waiting to blaze out. She had been repelled by it.
Dr. Green, told that she was out, did not go away. He said, instead, "It is you I wish to see, Margie."
Eleanor heard a step, the opening of a door into the dining-room, then its sharp closing.
She sat up on the edge of her bed. Had her mother sent for Dr. Green? That was not possible, both from the nature of his greeting and because her mother had only her to send on errands. Could it be that she was ill, and that he had observed it and had come to remonstrate with her for not having medical advice? If there was anything the matter with her mother, she must know. She rose quickly and went on with her dressing.
Then her face grew white. Dr. Green had called her mother "Margie!" Moreover, he was now loudly and rudely remonstrating with her. He was, one might say, storming at Mrs. Bent. It was as though the caged animal in his breast had escaped.
Eleanor stood still, her figure straight, one hand pressing the thick coil of her dark hair close to her head, the other holding a long pin. Her hair was drawn back closely; the unsoftened line of her forehead and cheek changed her expression, gave her a different and austere cast of countenance. She stood motionless, regarding herself absently until her arms dropped. It was Dr. Green, of course, who had long ago scolded her mother!
Downstairs Green's voice rose and fell, rose and fell. There was the heat of anger in it, there was a tone of command, there was no softer tone.
But Eleanor no longer heard. Again she gathered her hair back from her face and stood looking at herself. She saw the single line of austerity; sheturned her head now this way, now that. Then she sat down once more on the edge of her bed.
For more than an hour she watched the ticking clock. It was half-past two when Dr. Green's first angry sentence fell upon the quiet air; it was four when he closed the door behind him.
When at last she went downstairs, her mother had gone into the garden. Mrs. Bent came in and put the supper on the table slowly, and called Eleanor. When supper was eaten and the dishes put away, she joined her daughter on the porch.
"I have something I must tell you," said she. "I—"
Eleanor sprang up in panic.
"I can't stop now, mother. I must go for the mail. I have important mail coming. I must go."
Mrs. Bent looked at her, then down at the floor. She twisted her hands together.
"All right."
Eleanor walked swiftly through the dusk.
"I don't want to hear anything," said she. "I will not hear anything."
As she approached the college gate she halted for an instant, out of breath and panting. Two men were coming slowly toward her from the other side. She heard Dr. Lister's clear, high voice and Dr. Scott's answering laugh. Not only had Mrs. Lister given her consent to the publication of Basil's manuscript, but the publisher of "Willard's," who was also a publisher of books, had said in answer to Dr. Scott's inquiry that he would be deeply interested in any work of Basil Everman's. Last,but not least, Mrs. Scott had gone to Atlantic City. Her husband had many reasons for cheerfulness.
"I wish that each day had forty-eight hours and that every one was a working hour," Eleanor heard him say gayly. Then, as Dr. Lister turned to go back to his own door, Dr. Scott called after him, "So Richard is back!"
"Yes," answered Dr. Lister. "He came the day before yesterday by way of Niagara. Mrs. Lister is getting him ready to go to New York."
"When does he go?"
"To-morrow. I'm going with him. His teacher doesn't usually begin so early, but he is making a special case of Richard."
"He's a lucky boy."
A meeting with Dr. Scott at the gate could not be avoided. He lifted his hat and came to Eleanor's side with courtly alacrity. He had no longer envy for any living soul. He told her as they walked along about Basil Everman, about his youth, about the extraordinary achievement which was to startle the reading world.
"We lack information about the two years of his absence from Waltonville. They were his richest years. But we must be grateful for what we have." He looked down kindly. The summer, he thought, had been hard on Eleanor as it had been hard on every one. "It makes one wish to be very diligent, doesn't it—such a record as this lad's?"
Tears came into Eleanor's eyes. She longed to say, "Yes, but what if no diligence avails?" But she could not trust herself to say anything.
At the door of the post-office Dr. Scott bowed himself away. So Richard was here, had been here since the day before yesterday and had not been to see her!
Then Eleanor put a period upon the episode of Richard. As she stepped out the door, she encountered him coming in. Their eyes met and clung to one another, their cheeks crimsoned.
"Eleanor!" cried Richard.
"Well?" said Eleanor.
Richard seemed to be struggling to find words in which to answer. When he sought in vain, she looked at him, unsmilingly, from under level brows.
"I wish you would let me pass," said she.
She did not go in the direction of the little gray house, but out toward the far end of Waltonville. There was nothing to be afraid of even after dark in the quiet country roads, and at home there was a great deal to be afraid of.
Dr. Scott manufactured beautiful phrases as he walked to Thomasina's. He thought of his last visit to her house, when he had been accompanied, when his most polished sentences had hung, unfinished, on the air while Mrs. Scott spoke of matters totally unrelated to the subject in hand. This call would be very different. He hoped that Thomasina would let him sit in the semi-darkness of her parlor, and look out into her garden. He was punctilious about appearances; he had not the least instinct of a Don Juan, and he would have been horrified to have any one suppose that his affections wandered for an instant. But to-night he did not care for appearances. If a suspicious spouse had been upon his track, if the whole village had been at gaze, he would still have gone to call upon Thomasina. She was of Basil Everman's generation, she would be able to talk well about him. She was a keen observer who would have remembered and noted incidents and traits that even his sister might have forgotten. He had many questions to ask; he would be scholarly and elaborate and impressive—Dr. Scott at his best. It would disappoint him keenly to find that Thomasina was not at home, or that there were other callers to claim her attention.
But Thomasina was at home and she was alone. She was pale, but paleness was not unbecoming. He looked at her with admiration. She was distinguished, she was a personage, she was the most notable citizen of Waltonville, and he was proud of her friendship.
She inquired for Mrs. Scott and for Cora. She was not unaware of Cora's trouble. She spoke of Richard and of the opportunities before him.
"He has talent and time and youth and ambition and ample means," said she.
"It sounds too promising."
"Oh, he'll be chastened, poor lad. We all are, sooner or later!"
"Miss Thomasina—" Dr. Scott paused; a sentence hovered upon the edge of recollection; he tried to identify and complete it. Was it something about "a girl to go gypsying with through all the world"? Such a girl he seemed to see before him.
"Yes?" said Thomasina encouragingly.
"I am to have an extraordinary opportunity thanks to Mrs. Lister."
"Yes?" said Thomasina with a little more curiosity. Her heart was still sore at thought of Mary Alcestis.
"I am to edit her brother's works!"
"What works?" asked Thomasina.
"Works which they have found; other stories, poems, translations, an incredibly rich and valuable collection."
Thomasina leaned forward, an intensely eager look in her brown eyes.
"Works they have found! Where?"
"I think they were put away. I think from what Dr. Lister said her grief for her brother was so great that she could not bear to have them touched."
"And who has touched them now?" asked Thomasina in a hard voice.
"I think—it is my impression—that Dr. Lister found them and persuaded her."
Thomasina sank back in her chair.
"Did you know Basil Everman well?" asked Dr. Scott.
"Yes." Thomasina's voice was now a whisper.
"I wonder whether you would talk to me about him. I must prepare a biographical chapter and the material is so very scant."
Thomasina rose unsteadily, and asked to be excused for a moment. She went out into the hall and climbed the stairs slowly. When she came back she carried her little inlaid box as though it contained precious and fragile jewels. She stood before Dr. Scott and held it out.
"Here are Basil Everman's letters," said she. "They show all his plans and hopes. They were written tome." The first utterance of a bride could have been no more filled with sweet triumph. "I did not know that any of his plans had been carried out. I did not know anything survived. You may use the letters if you wish."
Dr. Scott felt like Richard that there were moments in life to which one could say, "Linger, thou art so fair!"
Thomasina still held out the little box.
"Do you wish me to look at them now?"
"If you will."
He put out a shaking hand. He would have thought long before exchanging this experience for a year of the opportunities of a Boswell.
Thomasina took up a book; then she walked into her garden; then she crossed the hall, closing both doors behind her, and practiced finger exercises in her music room. The light, delicate arpeggios and runs and trills came faintly to Dr. Scott's enchanted ears. Thus had Thomasina quieted her soul a thousand times.
When she returned there remained but one letter in the little box. Dr. Scott was not reading; he sat staring at the floor. It seemed to him that he had helped to open the tomb of a Queen Ta, that he had touched the jewels with which the hands of love had decked her. Then he looked up. Thomasina regarded him; alive, breathing, lovely, she was not in the least like Queen Ta. He felt that he must speak, but his eloquence, slow, but equal to every occasion, failed him now.
"If you will tell me what passages you wish to use, I shall copy them for you."
"May I say that they were written to you?"
An inward light illumined Thomasina's face. It was not pride, it was an emotion more intense, more exalted.
"You have been honored above most women," said Dr. Scott.
Thomasina took one of the letters in her hand.
"Say they were written to a friend. Hisbiography does not need me, and I had rather be invisible beside him." Thus Thomasina, who longed, in Mrs. Lister's opinion, for fame! "Now I must go over to the Listers to say good-bye to Richard."
Together Dr. Scott and Thomasina crossed the campus and at the Listers' door Dr. Scott said good-night. He could scarcely wait to get back to his study and to his pen. He did not mean to stop at his house; indeed, he thought it unlikely that his house would see him until dawn, but remembering a need for matches, he ran up the steps. There sitting on the doorstep, a valise beside her, was a small figure.
"Cora!" said Dr. Scott. "What in the world are you doing here?"
Cora rose stiffly. It seemed that she had been waiting a long time.
"I came back on the nine o'clock train."
"Where is your mother?"
"She is at Atlantic City. I told her that I wouldn't stay."
The last sentence startled Dr. Scott even more than Cora's unexpected appearance. He unlocked the door and picked up the valise. There was a new tone in her sweet voice, a tone which disturbed him, but when he got the lamp lighted and had a good look at her round little face, it would doubtless seem imaginary. Surely it could not be that she had come home so as to be near Richard Lister!
When the lamp was lit, it seemed to reveal the same Cora, a little white and tired and travel-stained, but surely not wild or violent!
"Sit down, my dear!"
Cora sat down heavily on a little gilt chair.
"Are you hungry?"
"No, I thank you," she answered, true to her polite type.
Dr. Scott sat himself down on the second step.
"What does this return mean, my dear? You went away to have a change."
Cora looked at him, looked long at him. In that look certain messages passed from her to her father. For a long time she did not answer, then she burst into tears.
"I am not crying because I want to cry," said she angrily. "Or because I feel like crying. I am tired, that is why I cry. I came home because I couldn't stand the dullness."
"The dullness!" Dr. Scott was bewildered. "Of Atlantic City!"
"I want something to do," demanded Cora, "something for my mind. You have always treated me like a baby. You've sent me to school and put me out of your thoughts. You don't even talk to me intelligently; I mean that you don't talk to me as if I were intelligent. You talk to Miss Thomasina and Dr. Lister in an entirely different way. I can study as well as Richard and—and as—" but the name of her rival Cora could not pronounce. "I have a better mind than Walter. Walter can't do anything but make money. You should hear him with his friends at Atlantic City, you should hear him only ten minutes! And he wants me to like those people!"
"My dear—"
But Cora had not said all she had to say.
"Mother thinks I have failed because I am not engaged to Richard. He never thought of me. I am convinced that he never thought of me. It has made me appear like a crazy person. I don't know what the Listers think of me."
Then Cora gave her father a shock of many volts. She had not read her padded poets or her Bible in vain. Nor was her paternity entirely without evidence.
"I don't wish to go in solemn procession all my days because of the bitterness of my soul."
For the first time in his life, Dr. Scott's reaction from a thrilling experience was expressed in terms of money. He determined at that instant that his work on Basil Everman's writings must be paid for; he determined, moreover, that henceforth the whole of his salary should not be handed over as heretofore. He put his arm round his weeping daughter.
"Don't cry, Cora! You will have plenty left in life. Sometime you will smile over this trouble. You and I will work together, and by and by we will go abroad."
Eleanor walked far out on the country road. She met no one and felt no fear. There was in her heart, on the contrary, a bitter satisfaction in feeling that she was doing what Cora Scott would not dream of doing and what Mrs. Lister would heartily disapprove of. She felt a sullen indifference to Waltonville's rules of conduct.
As she went on she made plans. As soon as arrangements could be completed, they would go away to return no more. She would leave behind her all the gifts which Dr. Green had showered upon her since her childhood. She saw his strong-featured face, animated by intellect and will, and then Margie's frightened eyes and her trembling mouth. For herself she would not have anything to do with love in any of its manifestations.
But when she had turned back, she said under her breath, "Oh, Richard, Richard!"
As she passed Dr. Green's door, walking rapidly because she felt sudden compunction on her mother's account, he appeared on the step and spoke to her with astonishment.
"Where have you been at this hour, Eleanor?"
Eleanor looked up at him, hating his authoritative voice.
"I've been walking in the country."
"Come in. I wish to speak to you."
"It's late; my mother does not know where I am."
"A few minutes won't make any difference. I'll walk home with you."
Against her will Eleanor went slowly up the steps and into the untidy rooms. She sat down upon the edge of a chair in the office and Dr. Green sat opposite her.
"I have persuaded your mother to go away from Waltonville."
"Have you?" said Eleanor.
"Aren't you interested?"
"Oh, yes." Eleanor's tone belied her words.
"It is time that you were getting away."
"Why?" asked Eleanor perversely.
"So that you may possess the world. You didn't expect to stay here forever, did you?"
Eleanor made no answer. There were certain conditions under which she would have been willing to stay here forever.
Dr. Green looked at her impatiently.
"You had plans for your future. Where is the young woman who was going to be George Eliot and Jane Austen in one, pray? You haven't forgotten her?"
"She has ceased to exist. I'm not interested in writing."
"Not interested in writing! Nonsense!" He began to argue for learning, for travel, for education. He reminded Eleanor of her achievements, of her fine mind; he told her that it was sinful to think of anything but her own mental progress in theseformative years. She had no responsibilities, no cares, nothing to look after but herself. She should go to school, continuing her work at a university.
"But I am not interested in writing," repeated Eleanor.
"What are you interested in, then?" Dr. Green looked angrily at the pretty creature who listened unmoved to his harangue. "I spoke to you, Eleanor. I asked you what you are interested in?"
Eleanor rose, tall and slim, and looked at him across the untidy office. It seemed to her that he knew about Richard and that he was mocking her.
"That is my own affair."
Dr. Green rose also and for an instant the two faced one another, eye meeting eye.
"Eleanor," he announced distinctly, "if you ever speak to me like that again, I shall punish you."
Eleanor measured the distance to the door, her eye creeping along the floor. Then she looked back at Dr. Green. He had turned pale, the fine, severe line of his forehead and cheek were outlined plainly against the dark woodwork of the door behind him.
"I am going home," said Eleanor.
Dr. Green stepped between her and the door.
"You can't go like this!" said he earnestly.
"I can go any way I choose," said Eleanor. "You have no authority over me. I know perfectly well what is in your mind when you threaten me. It has been coming to me slowly for a long time, but I was too dull to understand until to-day."
Dr. Green still stood before the outer door. A deep red rose from neck to forehead.
"Your mother and I had very little in common," said he at last. Then, after a long pause, "She has had every comfort, she has not suffered, she has lived exactly the quiet, domestic, undisturbed life she wanted to live."
Still Eleanor said nothing.
"And she has had you."
Eleanor made a tiny motion with her hand.
"All my boyhood I starved for learning. When I finished my college course and was about to enter the medical school, I found myself carried away. I had starved myself in other ways. I had known no women. Your mother was very pretty. I blame myself entirely. But she couldn't see any necessity for my going on. She was satisfied with things as they were. I had ambitions; she—" Dr. Green did not finish his sentence, but it was impossible not to know what was in his mind. "I gave her all I had to leave me free to go on, and that, with what she had from her father, was enough for her to live on. She went away.But she didn't tell me about you!" Dr. Green's hands clenched. "We had had hard times, but I didn't deserve that! I found her here by mere chance. She had even taken another name! But I don't wish to cast any blame on her."
"I don't want to hear anything said against her," said Eleanor bluntly.
"I am not going to say anything against her," protested Dr. Green, "except that she has had the easier part."
"I don't see that," said Eleanor. She went rapidly toward the door.
"You will go away from Waltonville?"
"Yes."
"Where would you like to go?"
"Where I can get work, teaching or something of that kind."
"Eleanor!" cried Dr. Green.
She paused, her hand on the knob.
"If you have any feeling for me at all, you won't even make it necessary for me to tell you what I'm going to do."
Then she went down the office steps. Dr. Green let her go alone.
When she had gone, he sat and looked about. "The little monkey!" said he, aloud. Then suddenly he rose with a mighty spring and opened the door. Though the hour was late he strode up the street toward the college. At Thomasina's he glanced in, but the house was dark. As he went through the campus gate, he saw that there was a light in Dr. Lister's study; it might be that she was there—if so, well and good; it would save him some words.
In Dr. Lister's study Richard and his father and mother and Thomasina sat together. There were traces of tears on Mrs. Lister's face, as was natural to one who was bidding farewell this evening to a happy era. Dr. Lister swung his foot rapidly; he anticipated with delight his journey to New York. Thomasina sat with Richard on the sofa. He was thin; his boyish good looks were gone, but good looks of a better sort had come to take their place. He discussed impersonal matters with a manly air.
All four were glad to see Dr. Green. The moments had grown a little difficult and Thomasina took advantage of his coming to make her adieux.
"I'll see you next month, my dear. If I can persuade your mother to come, too, we'll have a fine time."
Green's tall figure barred the way to the hall.
"Please wait a minute, Miss Thomasina," said he. "I have something to say to all of you and it is easier to say it to all of you together. Miss Thomasina told me some days ago that you, Mrs. Lister, have been misled by several coincidences into thinking that Eleanor Bent was the daughter of your brother Basil."
Mrs. Lister looked aghast.
"That is a great mistake," said Dr. Green. "Eleanor Bent is my daughter. I fell in love with her mother when I was here and followed her away. Before Eleanor was born, we separated, and when I came here to practice I found them. Her mother was established and was not willing to readjust her life and I deferred to her. It was an absurd mistake. Eleanor's ideas of a departed parent were already fixed; otherwise it would have been more absurd."
Having finished his speech, Dr. Green was left without a response. One would have thought that he had stricken his audience dumb. After a long time Dr. Lister swung his right knee over his left.
"Mrs. Lister thought she resembled her brother," said he.
"She resemblesme," said Dr. Green.
"But her talent!" said Mrs. Lister, beginning to cry.
Green smiled grimly.
"That couldn't have been inherited from me, I suppose?" said he. "I asked Mrs. Bent about Basil Everman. She said that she had been persecuted by John Bates, then sinking into debauchery, and that your brother had protected her. She looked upon him as a sort of Saint George."
"Oh! oh! oh!" wept Mary Alcestis.
Richard rose to his feet.
"Does Eleanor know this?" he demanded.
"She knows now," said Dr. Green sorely.
"By Gad, you've got her into a pretty mess between you!" said Richard.
Thomasina sat with her hand covering her eyes. Suddenly she took it away and looked sharply at Mary Alcestis.
"This isn't the time to cry!"
"You cannot understand," sobbed Mary Alcestis.
"Can I not?" said Thomasina softly.
Mrs. Lister looked at Thomasina; then she crossed the room and sat down beside her.
"You said I was a fool, Thomasina. I was just that." She stared at Thomasina as though she saw her now for the first time. She did not even know the moment when Dr. Green left them to themselves.
The college clock struck eleven as Dr. Green went through the campus gate. But he did not go home, even though that was a late hour for Waltonville. He went across the town to thelittle gray house where the light still burned in the dining-room. When he walked in, Mrs. Bent looked up at him helplessly.
"I am trying to talk to her. I tell her that both of us was wrong. I was too much for gayety and going, and I didn't appreciate learning. But I appreciate learning now. I didn't know I should come to be ashamed."
Eleanor's face looked frozen.
"You kill me, mother, when you talk about being ashamed. I'm never ashamed of you. I don't see why we need to talk about it. Let it go."
"He was always kind to you," said Mrs. Bent. "Your books he gave you and your pie-anna and even your name that you like so well and your learning and you get your mind from him, and—"
"They are all hers by right," said Dr. Green.
"And he might go somewheres else and be a great doctor. I heard people say it often. I was hard to get along with," sobbed Mrs. Bent. "And I was afraid you would grow up ashamed of me. Oh, I done wrong!"
Still Eleanor said nothing.
"Do not make it harder for us than you must, my dear," said Dr. Green at last. "There have been some matters I didn't give heed to because I wanted you to come to something. I didn't know you had a question in your mind. I am more ambitious for you than I was for myself. An early and unconsidered marriage like your mother's and mine—"
Now Eleanor lifted her head.
"Oh! oh! oh!" she cried as Mrs. Lister had cried.
"What is it?" asked Dr. Green. "Let us be entirely frank with one another."
"I did not understand that you hadmarriedmy mother!" cried Eleanor. "Oh, I think you have been wrong and foolish and wicked, not so much to me as to one another!"
At midnight, when Dr. Green went out the little gate, he saw a dark figure in the shadow. It did not frighten or surprise him.
"Well, Richard?"
"I'm not going in. I wanted just a glimpse of her, that was all. I can't stand seeing her and talking to her and then having to come away."
"You have had your glimpse?"
"Yes. I'm fortified till the morning." Without further confidences, Richard took the first short cut that offered.
In late August of the next year, Thomasina came slowly across the green from the Lister house toward the campus gate. Mrs. Lister had begged her to stay longer, but she had felt a need for quietness. Mrs. Lister had been talking about Basil; she had not yet exhausted all possibilities for conversation in his strange posthumous fame, or in his attachment to Thomasina, so long unsuspected. She did not ask many questions at one time of Thomasina; they came slowly, a question or two this week, another question next month. Sometimes she wept.
"There are times when I can see just how I thought that dreadful thing about Basil and there are other times when I just cannot understand!"
"I wouldn't think of it," said Thomasina cheerfully. "And, anyway, Mary Alcestis, you didn't hurt any one but yourself."
A flood of tears choked Mrs. Lister's voice.
"I could explain it to Basil. He was always very kind and understanding." She looked at Thomasina with a sort of angry astonishment. "You are always so calm, and I—I am homesick to see Basil. I shall never be altogether at peace until I see him."
"Yes," said Thomasina, "I can understand that."
"You ought to be with Richard as much as youcan," said Mrs. Lister. "In another month he will have gone back to New York."
Thomasina smiled. Across from the chapel drifted the sound of music. Richard had spent a day inside the old organ and had coaxed and wheedled it into a new sound. He was now on the organ bench with Eleanor beside him. For Richard at his happiest moments there was still a favorite form of expression, the chants of his boyhood. With full organ he sang the Ambrosian Hymn. The Gregorian music, the summer evening, Richard's voice—Thomasina was never to forget them.