CHAPTER XXIX

"I need Thee every hour,Most gracious Lord!"

It is not difficult now to see why the crowd followed; her voice is like a child's lost in the wood, but brave, and sure of ultimate protection; it has a curious effect of the country and the hedgerows. They listen eagerly, they like it.

"Come, Margarita, I think we ought to get away—the crowd is getting thicker. People are staring at us."

"No, no, Jerry, let me alone! Oh, see the poor woman, she is too ill to sing! She has lost her voice—do you know it?"

And so she has. With a clutch at her throat and a pathetic turn of her eyes to the speaker, the little lieutenant shakes her head at him and is dumb. He seats her deftly on a camp stool by the drummer, pats her shoulder, sends a friendly gutter-rat with the face of a sneak-thief for water, and turns to the crowd.

"Come now, friends, the lieutenant 'ere 'as lost 'er voice along o' you, an' tryin' to save yer! Can't you pipe up, some o' you? If some of you'd sing a bit with us, now, maybe we'd be able to take backonesoul to Christ with us to-night. Can't one o' yer sing?"

"I will sing!" says some one near me—and it is Margarita!

I clutch her cape fiercely, but it slips off in my hand and she is at the drum, and the lane that opened for her closes for me, and I fight in vain to reach her—Oh, it must be a dream!

"IneedThee everyhour...."

Ah-h-h! The crowd sighs with the old familiar joy, the magic of the golden voice slips like a veil over the cruel angles of their broken lives and mists and softens everything.

She has a slip of printed paper in her hand and readsseriously from it; some one holds the transparency near her shoulder for light—her white shoulders, bare in Trafalgar Square!

THEY ARE STILL AS DEATH, TRANCED IN THOSE LIQUID BELL-TONESTHEY ARE STILL AS DEATH, TRANCED IN THOSE LIQUID BELL-TONES

"IneedThee everyhour,MostgraciousLord,Notendervoice likethineCanpeaceafford...."

They are still as death, tranced in those liquid bell-tones. The great drum shivers, as it shivered, of old, a tom-tom, across the African desert; the old, primal thrill creeps through my blood—good heavens, is this fear? Is it superstition?Is it religion?

"IneedThee—oh, IneedThee!"

The woman sobs like a damned soul beside me; a man coughs huskily. Will no one stop her? They have wedged me so that I cannot breathe, I feel them gathering from the nearby streets. And there she stands, coral like blood on her bare neck, the scarf fallen from her black hair, the plea of all humanity pouring in a great anguished stream of melody out of her white throat.

"IneedThee oh, IneedThee,Ev'ryhourI need Thee!"

The tambourine shudders barbarically across the smooth flood of her voice: it is the tingling crash of the Greek Mysteries—and I had thought it vulgar!

I hear hansoms jingling up—what will Roger say? He would kill them all, if he could, I know, and yet no one there would hurt a hair of her head—and does she not belong to the public?

God knows the poor devils need something—is it that, then? Is it a real thing? Do people fight for it like that? For this imperious Voice is agonising for something and the drum is the beat of its heart.

"Gawd's frightful hard on women," the poor creature beside me moans, and lo, the little dumb lieutenant is byher side miraculously, and like a shifting kaleidoscope the crowd lets them through and she kneels, shaking, by the drum.

Their white faces heap in layers before me; drawn, wolfish, brutal in the flaring lights they peer and gasp and sob, like uncouth inhabitants of another world—wait a bit, Jerry, it is your world, just the same, and perhaps you are responsible for it? Ugh!

"IneedThee ..."

"Gad, it's little Joséfa!"

The clear English voice cuts across the hush, and,

"What a lark!" answers a deeper bass.

He is a very important and highly conventional personage, nowadays, that slender pink dandy, with five grown daughters and a Constituency; but if by any odd chance he should read this, I will wager he forgets what he is actually looking at for a moment and sees against the black shadows and rising night fog of Trafalgar Square a beautiful, black-robed woman in red corals lifted to an empty barrow by two eager club-dandies and held there by a gigantic Guardsman—the best fencer in Europe, once!

Oh, Bertie, the Right Honourable now, the always honourable then, do you know that there were tears on your pink cheeks? And your noble friend, who broke up his establishment in St. John's Wood the next day and founded the Little Order of the Sons of St. Francis, does he know that the lightning stroke that blinded him like Saul of Tarsus and sent him reeling from Piccadilly to the slums, lighted for a moment, as it fell, the way of a dazed, rheumatic bachelor from America, who saw the terror in his eyes and the sweat on his forehead as he held his corner of the barrow and Margarita drove him to his God?

"Ev'ryhourIneedThee ..."

The fog rolls over us, the lights flare through a sea of mist; the Honourable Bertie produces a hansom, from his pocketapparently, and the wild, dark etching is wiped out like a child's picture on a slate.

Margarita falls asleep on my shoulder, I gain my usual philosophical control, gradually, and realise, now the echoes of that agonised pleading have ceased to disturb my soul, that the woman beside me is not even a Christian, technically speaking, and knew not, literally, what she did!

The magic of the Golden Voice—ah, what magic can cope with it? Of all the pictures hers has painted for me on those miraculous, grey-tissued walls where memory lives, this strange coarse-tinted sketch—a very Hogarth in its unsparing contrasts—stands out the clearest. At night, when I close my eyes and think "London," then does that poor sister of the streets moan to me that "Gawd's frightful hard on women," and fight her way to Margarita—who has been favoured beyond most women, and knows not God—at least, not that implacable deity of the London slum! Whenever I hear or read the phrase "Salvation Army" then do I see a young exquisite with a white camellia in his buttonhole, gazing like a hypnotised Indian Seer at a crude transparency blotted with unconvincing texts, then rushing off to found a celibate order—from Margarita, who was no more celibate that Ceres the bountiful!

Ah, well, the Way is a Mystery, as Alif said, and who am I that I should expect to solve it, when kings and philosophers have failed? At any rate, I have my pictures safe.

She sang her French rôles in Germany and three times inSiegfried, and was getting ready for Paris again when a long letter from Alice Carter besought us all to come to Boston as quickly as might be. Old Madam Bradley had been stricken suddenly with paralysis. One side of her body was beyond movement, but the other was as yet unimpaired, and by a series of questions they had found out that she wanted to see Roger—and Roger's wife—before she died. Nor was this enough, for the proud, afflicted old creature, when their ingenuity had failed, traced left-handed upon a slate, with infinite effort, my initials: evidently she wanted to make her peace in this world before she left it.

Margarita demurred a little and I, for one, should be the last to blame her. Greater knowledge of the world and especially her acquaintance with Walter Carter, who did not hesitate to blame his mother-in-law, had taught her to appreciate Madam Bradley's neglect, and her feeling for death had none of the sacred respect custom breeds in us—at least outwardly. She had just begun to studyLohengrinand a charming week at a Frenchchâteauwith Sue had given her a taste for the society she liked and ornamented so well. She suggested that Roger and I should go alone, leaving her with Sue, and we (Sue and I) trembled for the outcome, for she seemed rather determined, to us.

But we had not counted sufficiently on Roger's sense of what was right and just. What might be considered a slighting of his personal claims he could endure patiently; whatwas due to his family and position he could not ignore. Quietly he cancelled Margarita's early contracts, secured passage and dismissed the servants.

"Be ready to sail on Saturday,chérie," he said, "I want my mother to see you very much, and Mary, too."

"Very well," said Margarita, round-eyed and breathing fast, and Barbara Jencks clapped her hands noiselessly. She adored Roger, as did all his servants and dependents, for that matter.

We reached Boston with the first early snows, and though his mother's face was set and her hand steady as she laid it on his head, I think they understood each other and were grateful from their hearts for that hour of reconciliation. For Margarita the stately silver-haired figure with immovable features and fixed, withdrawn gaze held some unexpected and inexplicable charm. She kissed Madam Bradley willingly, set the little Mary on her lap and beguiled the child with every graceful wile to laugh and crow and exhibit her tiny vocabulary. She sang by the hour, so that the gloomy house—brightened now, for the baby's health—echoed with her lovely notes. Bradleys and Searses and Wolcotts flocked to meet her and spread her fame and charm abroad; and Roger forgot for a while the load he carried and seemed like himself again. Even Sarah capitulated, and that before very long, too. I saw her actually wiping away a tear as she watched Madam Bradley lift with great effort her cold white finger and trace the outline of her grandchild's face: the little Mary was the image of her father and a fine Bradley, with only her mother's quick motions and mobile smile to remind one of that side of her ancestry.

Of course Madam Bradley was not demonstrative, nor even cordial, from any ordinary point of view, but from hers, and in the light of our knowledge of her, there was a tremendous difference. Already she had given little Mary a beautiful diamond cross and the famous Bradley silver tea-service. Sarah had softened wonderfully, too, and seemed tofeel that since her aunt did not die, it was incumbent upon her to pay her debt to heaven by burying the hatchet. I don't think I ever quite did Sarah justice, so far as her feeling for Madam Bradley went—she appeared to be deeply and genuinely attached to her and was sick with anxiety when the stroke took her. She shared perfectly the grandmother's feeling over the baby, and Margarita's good taste in presenting Roger with such a perfect Bradley was set down to her credit with vigorous justice. For she never forgave poor Alice for the brown little Carters. Alice's children resembled their father, and Sue's (almost grandchildren, in that house) were sickly and comparatively unattractive; but Margarita's daughter, perfect in health, beautiful as a baby angel, active, daring, and enchantingly affectionate, satisfied the old lady's pride completely and she sat for hours contentedly watching her sprawl on an Indian blanket on the floor.

Either the comfort of renewed relations with her children mended her health or the fatality of the shock was overestimated, for she did not die, not then nor for many years, but lived, happier, perhaps in her affliction than before it, for the bond between her and Roger and Mother Mary, strengthened when she was preparing for death, never loosened again, and more than once, a black-robed, white-coiffed figure has visited the home of her father's like a slim shadow, and carried with her one of the Church's greatest blessings, surely—the healing of old wounds and the restoring of human loves.

Like a white snake upon the sandsShe's writhing in the crispy foam,She holds her soul in her open hands,And now she staggers and now she stands,And now she runs to her husband's home!O I have seen a wife at rest,That croons the babe upon her knee,She lies upon her goodman's breastAs gentle as a bird at nest,The mermaid's saved her soul from Sea!Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden.

Like a white snake upon the sandsShe's writhing in the crispy foam,She holds her soul in her open hands,And now she staggers and now she stands,And now she runs to her husband's home!

O I have seen a wife at rest,That croons the babe upon her knee,She lies upon her goodman's breastAs gentle as a bird at nest,The mermaid's saved her soul from Sea!

Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden.

Well, they stayed the month nearly out, and then Roger took a fancy to see the Island in winter, and I, hugging to my breast the consciousness of that furnace, was easily persuaded to go with them: it is January, February and March that punish me so fearfully in the North, and really only the last two of those. I had thought Margarita a littledistraiteand cold to us all, toward the last, and feared she was resenting her exile: she took a short trip to New York, accompanied, of course, by the faithful Jencks, and I had visions of American contracts, but Roger never mentioned the subject—didn't even ask her why she went, I believe, she hated to be questioned so.

We found everything in first-rate order (I had written ahead to light the furnace) and you should have seen Roger's face when he noticed the registers in the big room! Like a boy's when some good-natured trick has been played upon him. Suppose we had not had them nor the coal—it makes me cold now to think of it.

I find I can't write about it very fully, after all, and I must be forgiven if I cut it short. It's a little too near, yet, after all the years. I know I never want to see snow again—it is the most cruel blue-white in the world.

We stopped the night, of course, and in the morning Roger and Margarita went for a walk on the crust, for it had snowed all night and the evening before—the great, fat, grey clouds were full of it—and we thought we were in for another blizzard like last year's. It had "let up" fora little, as they say about there, but Roger was afraid to risk going away till it had definitely ended, so they went for their walk, and I chatted with Miss Jencks by the fire. They had been gone about an hour when we heard a great scratching and whining at the door (I thought for a moment it was Kitch) and Rosy bounded in, snapping his teeth and glaring fearfully. We both jumped up and he flew at me and caught my sleeve in his teeth—for a moment, I confess, I felt a little queer, for I had seen him throw Caliban and hold him—then, as I drew back, he uttered the most heartrending howl I have ever heard, and spun wildly around, and at that moment I felt suddenly that something was up and that I was wanted. Miss Jencks felt it at exactly that moment, too, and ran for my great-coat before I asked her.

She says that I said,

"Where are they, old fellow? Go seek!" but I don't remember it. I know that she said in a low voice,

"I shall be of no use—I can't run—but I will have everything ready," though she says I must have imagined it.

Rosy flew through the door and I after him—she had the sense to bring me my heavy arctic overshoes, or I should have slipped in a minute—and I ran for about fifty yards.

Then something stopped me. Where it came from,whatdid it, I don't know and can never know, but I swear I heard a low, distinct voice close to me (not a cry, mind you, but a quiet, hoarse voice) saying,

"Get a rope. Get a rope."

I checked like a scared horse and nearly fell.

"Get a rope," I heard again, "get a rope."

Then, cursing at myself for a crazy fool, I actually turned, with Rosy showing his teeth at me, and dashed back (all those precious yards!) and grabbed a pile of rope Caliban had brought out to bind some big logs for hauling and abandoned under the eaves when we arrived on the island. Rosy was far ahead now, but he had gone through the crust at intervals and I tracked him by that.

I LEANED OVER THE BANK AND CRIED THAT I WAS THERE, BUT SHE NEVER STOPPED—IT WAS TERRIBLEI LEANED OVER THE BANK AND CRIED THAT I WAS THERE, BUT SHE NEVER STOPPED—IT WAS TERRIBLE

Suddenly the wind—it was blowing a steady gale behind me—shifted, and I heard a succession of terrible cries, great hoarse, high shrieks, like nothing human and yet unlike any animal. Wordless, throat-tearing screams they were, and I shouted back, against the head-on wind,

"Coming! Coming! Hold on! I'm coming!" till I coughed and strangled and had to stop.

How I ran! I never did it before and certainly never can again. Rosy's tracks curved and twisted, and I felt I was losing time, but dared not risk missing them, for I was coming nearer to that awful voice steadily, though it echoed so I should have been helpless without any other guide.

Well, I found them. Roger up to his shoulders in icy water, his head dropped back, white, on her arm, and she up to her waist on a slippery ledge under the highest point of the bank—the bank that I blasted out! She was caught, I could see, on a jagged point by her heavy, woollen skirt (it was made in London, bless it!) and must have wedged her foot, besides, in some way, for she had his whole weight; her lips were blue. She wore a blood-red cape, all merry and Christmas-like against the white ledges, and her hair streamed in the wind. Her head was thrown back like a hound's and those blood-curdling screams poured out of it; her eyes were shut. Now and then Rosy bayed beside her, scratching at the snow, and where the water was not frozen in the protected pools it swirled like a mill-race around the nasty, pointed rocks.

I leaned over the bank and cried that I was there, but she never stopped—it was terrible. Finally I made a slip-noose and actually managed to fling it over his head—Roger had taught me to do that at school, twenty years ago—and that stopped her, hitting against her cheek, and she opened her eyes.

"Put it under his arms, can you?" I cried, and after several efforts, for she was nearly frozen stiff, the brave,clever creature did, and I got it around a tree on the edge. Then I stopped, panting, for I realised that I could do no more. The run had taken all the strength out of me—I couldn't have dragged a cat—and she was little more than a foot below me!

I can't write about it. My arms ache now, just as my infernal shoulders ached with that paralysing, numb ache then.

"Listen!" I cried, for she had begun to scream again, "listen, Margarita, or I will beat you! Is he unconscious?"

She nodded.

"Can you hold on five minutes, with his weight gone?"

She blinked in a sort of stupid assent.

"Could you for ten? Are you braced solid?"

Again she blinked, and with an inspiration I plunged my shaking hand into my great-coat pocket and pulled out a brandy-flask. Miss Jencks had taken it from the sideboard.

I tied it into my handkerchief, opened, and swung it down to her, and she got her lips around it and coughed it down. It acted instantly and she could move a little, and while I encouraged her, and after several heartrending failures, which nearly spilled all the brandy, she got it into his mouth between his teeth, as his big body swung in the noose. It ran over his chin and down his neck, but a little got in, and his eyelids quivered. Soon he coughed, and I dared not wait another second.

"I am going for Caliban," I said very distinctly, "we will pull you out in a few minutes. Let him alone and hang on, do you hear? Don't scream any more—you are safe. Pour all the brandy into him—tell him he is tied fast. Don't try to move—you may slip, and tear your skirt. Hold on!"

Then I turned my back on them and ran, or rather stumbled off. I leaned over and kissed her forehead, first.

I remember muttering, "I never asked before—if Youor Anybody is there, save them! Take me and save them!" and then I stumbled on and on....

It was not too long. Caliban was coming with his big wood-sled and more rope and blankets, and as I caught sight of him the most extraordinary thought flew into my mind, which worked with a dreadful clearness, for I saw them stiffen and sink and slip away every second. Rosy bayed just then, and as my heart sank, for I thought they were gone, it suddenly occurred to me what Rosy's name must have been!

"It'sRosencrantz!" I muttered, "and the one Margarita insists was called 'Gildy' wasGuildenstern, and they wereHamlet'sfriends—poor Prynne!" Perhaps that wasn't idiotic—I laughed as I stumbled along!

Well, they were there, and Roger was enough himself to strike out with his feet a little and avoid hindering us, if he couldn't help much. I made another noose for her, and she hung in it while Caliban dragged him up—the fellow had the strength of an ox and showed wonderful dexterity—and later crawled down the rocks and cut her skirt through with his big clasp-knife. She was the hardest to move, for her foot was caught—all that saved her. I thought we should break her ankle before we could get her.

We laid them on the sledge, wrapped in blankets, poured in more brandy, and Caliban attached Rosy to it by his collar—an old trick of his, it seems—and they dragged us all home, for my worthless legs gave out completely.

Miss Jencks and Agnès rubbed them and mustard-bathed them and I wrote telegrams for Caliban to take in the launch—wrote them as well as I could in the clutches of a violent chill, with my teeth like castanets and my hands palsied—and even as I wrote, it came to me that Margarita had repeated monotonously, all the way home, in a hoarse, painful voice (but, mercifully, a low one) "get a rope, get a rope, get a rope."

It was the voice I had heard, that turned me back!

She was all right, but very weak and sore and with a little fever—not much. She was perfectly conscious of everything within an hour, and told us about it: how she had slipped and Roger had hit his head and strained himself in going after her. She thinks she held him under the arms ten minutes, screaming all the time! She sent Rosy back, finally, though at first he refused to go.

Roger was delirious for five days and very dangerously ill for three weeks—it was double pneumonia. Miss Jencks had seen it before and it was her prompt measures before we could get the doctor or Harriet that saved him, they think. It was a bad age for pneumonia; Harriet said she would rather have pulled Margarita through it. She brought a deaconess from the little dispensary with her and one or the other was watching him like a cat every second, for three weeks. It was a nurse's case, the doctor said, though he stopped the first week.

When Margarita came to herself after an hour or so, she asked for me, and as I knelt by her bed and she turned her great eyes on me I caught my breath, for I was looking at a new woman. I can't describe it better than by saying that she had a soul! There had always been something missing, you see, though I would never have admitted it, if she hadn't got it then. But it was there.

It was very pathetic, those first days when Roger was delirious: she was nearly so herself. And yet it was not wholly grief—there was a definite reason for it, which we all felt, somehow, but she would not give it.

"Will he not know me for a minute, a little minute, Harriet?" she would beg, so piteously, and Harriet would soothe her and try to give her hope. The fifth day he was very low and the doctor told us to make up our minds for anything: he hadn't slept all night. I took Harriet by the shoulders and asked her if she could not possibly make him conscious—before. I don't know why I asked her and not the doctor, but I did. She promised me she would try(I think she had nearly given up hope, herself) and at three the next morning she called me and said that I might have a chance—that he might know us for a moment. Margarita was by the bed: her face was enough to break your heart.

"Only a minute, Harriet—only a little minute!" she pleaded like a baby. I don't know what insane vow I didn't offer ... He opened his eyes and they fell on her. She put her hand on his forehead and said very plainly.

"Listen, Roger, you must listen. It is I—Margarita,Chérie, you know. Do you hear?"

His eyes looked a little conscious, and Harriet held his pulse and slipped something into his mouth. In a moment we all knew that he knew us.

"Now say one thing, Mrs. Bradley—quickly!" Harriet whispered.

Margarita bent like a flash and whispered in his ear very swiftly: her whole body was tense. You should have seen his eyes—he was old Roger again! I could see his hand press hers and she kissed him just as the flash went by, and he took to muttering again.

Harriet pushed her away and put her hand on his forehead, then nodded at the deaconess.

"Call the doctor!" she said sharply, and I thought it was all over....

But it was the turn, and after that by hair's breadths and hair's breadths they pulled him over.

"Now he knows, Jerry," Margarita said to me, and went to bed herself.

It was a good week after that, when the doctor had gone and we were all breathing naturally again, that Harriet asked me abruptly if I had noticed Mrs. Bradley's voice. I said yes, that it was still decidedly husky. She looked at me so sadly, so strangely, that my nerves fairly jumped—we had all been on edge for a month—and I commanded her rather sharply to say what she meant and be done with it.

"Is her voice injured?"

"I am afraid so, yes," she said gently.

"But surely time and rest and proper treatment," I began, but she shook her head.

"The doctor examined her throat before he left," she said. "Of course he had no laryngoscope with him, but he didn't need one, really. The vocal cords are all stretched—he said the specialists might help her and take away a great deal of the hoarseness, but that in his opinion she can never stand the strain of public singing again: he thinks excitement alone would paralyse the cords."

"Who's to tell her?" I said quietly.

You see, we'd all been stretched so taut that we couldn't use any more energy in exclamations or regrets.

"I thought you might," she said, but I shook my head.

"Miss Jencks—" I began, but it appeared that Miss Jencks felt unequal to it. So Harriet told her, of course, on the principle that when one has a heavy load he may as well carry a little more, I suppose.

And after all it wasn't so bad; for Margarita came down to me a little later, and told me she had known it all the time!

"But, of course, dear child," I said hopefully, "Doctor —— is not a throat specialist, you know, and we can but try some of those famous fellows, a little later. Perhaps in a year or two——"

"You are very good to me, Jerry," she said, "but it is no use. I know. I shall never sing again. I am sorry, because——"

"Sorry?" I cried, "why, of course you are sorry! What do you mean?"

"Because," she continued placidly, "it will not be so much to give Roger."

"Give Roger?" I echoed stupidly, "how 'give Roger'?"

"I was not going to sing any more, anyway," she said.

For a moment I was dazed and then the simplicity of it all flashed over me.

"Why, Margarita!" I cried—and that is all the comment I ever made.

"That was what I wanted to tell him when he did not know me," she explained. "I—I was going to tell him the night—the night it happened."

"And does he know it now?"

"Of course. That is why he got well," she said promptly.

And do you know, I'm not sure she was wrong? That life was killing him—I mean it ran across his instincts and feeling and beliefs, every way.

There was no doubt she meant it. She never referred to the subject again.

He wanted her to see somebody else about her throat, but she absolutely refused to leave the Island till he was out of bed—Sarah came on with the baby two weeks later—and they sat by him all day nearly, the two of them, and he hardly let go her hand. He had changed a great deal in one way—his hair was quite silvered. But it was very becoming.

I didn't leave till I saw him in a dressing-gown in a long chair by the fire. Harriet went back to her hospital, and when Roger was up to it they went South for a bit before he began to work again.

The day before I left he did an odd thing—one of the two or three impractical, sentimental things I ever knew him to do in his life. He asked me to bring him his history of Napoleon—it had been packed into their luggage by mistake—and deliberately laid it on the heart of the fire! I cried out and leaned forward to snatch it—to think of the labour it represented!—but he put his hand on my arm.

"Don't, Jerry—I hate every page of it!" he said.

Well, I have been wondering these twenty years if perhaps they'll talk about it—the whole thing—some day. At the time, we all acted as if it were the most natural thing in the world for Margarita to settle down as ahausfrau—perhaps whenNoragot done with her studies of life (for I read Sue's Ibsen, you see) that is what she did, after all!

At any rate, I frankly hope so. For if all the wisdom and experience and training that the wonderful sex is to gain by its exodus from the home does not get back into it ultimately, I can't (in my masculine stupidity) quite see how it's going to get back into the race at all! And then what good has it done? I hope Mr. Ibsen knows!

[From Sue Paynter]

Paris, Feb. 10th., 189—

Jerry Dear:What must you think of me for delaying so long to write, after the few curt words I found for you that night? I hope you know that something must have kept me and have forgiven me already. Poor little Susy was taken very sick the night you sailed, with violent pains and a high fever. Fortunately there is a good American doctor here—a Doctor Collier—and we pulled her through, though it seemed a doubtful thing at one time. The doctor decided that she had appendicitis (I never heard of it before) and operated immediately on her, which undoubtedly saved her life. It seems that Mother Nature is not quite so clever as we have always thought her and has left a very dangerous littlecul-de-sacsomewhere, that ought not to be there, so modern science takes it out. Isn't that strange? The doctor has just come over to operate for this in Germany somewhere; he was an assistant of Dr. McGee, whom you sent to the South, and can't say enough of the magnificent work he is doing there. He was much interested to find I knew all about it and that Uncle Morris stocked the dispensary. Isn't the world small?I hope you're not feeling too badly about Margarita—don't. Of course I understand what the stage has lost, and you will confess that I was as anxious for her career as anybody, even when I was sorriest for Roger. I wanted her to have her rights as an artist. But ifshedoesn't wantthem—ah, that's a different pair of sleeves altogether. She has sent me her latest photograph, and the eyes are all I need. Of course, I have no such brilliant future to sacrifice, but if I had, I am sure I should throw a dozen of them over the windmill for two eyes like hers to-day!I don't know why I am prosing along at this rate and avoiding the main object of this letter. I must plunge right into it, I suppose, and get it over.Don't think I don't appreciate all your kind, your generous, offer meant, Jerry. I thought of it so often and so long before I gave you that brusque answer. And it tempted me for a moment—indeed it did. I think, as you say, that we could travel very comfortably together and we have many of the same tastes—I know no one so sympathetic as you. As for "nursing a rheumatic, middle-aged wanderer through assorted winter-climates," that is absurd, and you know it, though I should be glad enough to do it, if itweretrue, as far as that goes. I know all you would do for the children, and how kind you would be to them. Not that I like that part, though, to be quite frank. I could never love another woman's children (especially if I loved their father) and I can't understand the women that do. So I always imagine a man in the same position. And I can't help feeling, Jerry, that if youreallyloved me—loved me in the whole crazy sense of that dreadful world, I mean—that you wouldn't speak so sweetly about the children: how could you? How can any man—I couldn't, if I were one!But this is very unfair, because you never said you did love me in that way—don't imagine that I thought so for a moment. Jerry dear, my best friend now, for I must not count on Roger any more, do you think I am blind? Do you think I have been blind for three years? And will you think me a romantic, conceited fool when I say that unless I—even I, a widow and a jilt, who hurt a good man terribly and got well punished for it!—can have the kind of love that you can never give me, because you gave it to someone else three years ago, I don't want to accept your generous kindness? You see, I know how you can love, Jerry, just as I see now that I never knew how Roger could until those same three years ago. Of course he didn't either—wouldhe ever have known the difference, I wonder, if we had married?And there is another reason, too. You might just as well know it, for my conceit is not pride really, and it may be you know it already. Whatever love Frederick failed to kill in me—and the very idea of passionate love almost nauseates me, even yet—is not in my power to give you, Jerry dear. It might, some day, later, wake again, but it would not be your touch that could wake it.Now, since this is so of both of us, don't you see, dear, that things are better as they are? I promise you that if I ever need help, I will come to youfirst of all, since what you really want is to help me and make me comfortable and give me the pleasure of wide travel, you generous fellow! And if ever youreallyneed me, Jerry—but you won't, I am sure. No one else is quite what you are to me, or can be, now, and we must always be what we have always been—the best of friends. Tell me that you know I am right, and then let us never discuss it again.

Jerry Dear:

What must you think of me for delaying so long to write, after the few curt words I found for you that night? I hope you know that something must have kept me and have forgiven me already. Poor little Susy was taken very sick the night you sailed, with violent pains and a high fever. Fortunately there is a good American doctor here—a Doctor Collier—and we pulled her through, though it seemed a doubtful thing at one time. The doctor decided that she had appendicitis (I never heard of it before) and operated immediately on her, which undoubtedly saved her life. It seems that Mother Nature is not quite so clever as we have always thought her and has left a very dangerous littlecul-de-sacsomewhere, that ought not to be there, so modern science takes it out. Isn't that strange? The doctor has just come over to operate for this in Germany somewhere; he was an assistant of Dr. McGee, whom you sent to the South, and can't say enough of the magnificent work he is doing there. He was much interested to find I knew all about it and that Uncle Morris stocked the dispensary. Isn't the world small?

I hope you're not feeling too badly about Margarita—don't. Of course I understand what the stage has lost, and you will confess that I was as anxious for her career as anybody, even when I was sorriest for Roger. I wanted her to have her rights as an artist. But ifshedoesn't wantthem—ah, that's a different pair of sleeves altogether. She has sent me her latest photograph, and the eyes are all I need. Of course, I have no such brilliant future to sacrifice, but if I had, I am sure I should throw a dozen of them over the windmill for two eyes like hers to-day!

I don't know why I am prosing along at this rate and avoiding the main object of this letter. I must plunge right into it, I suppose, and get it over.

Don't think I don't appreciate all your kind, your generous, offer meant, Jerry. I thought of it so often and so long before I gave you that brusque answer. And it tempted me for a moment—indeed it did. I think, as you say, that we could travel very comfortably together and we have many of the same tastes—I know no one so sympathetic as you. As for "nursing a rheumatic, middle-aged wanderer through assorted winter-climates," that is absurd, and you know it, though I should be glad enough to do it, if itweretrue, as far as that goes. I know all you would do for the children, and how kind you would be to them. Not that I like that part, though, to be quite frank. I could never love another woman's children (especially if I loved their father) and I can't understand the women that do. So I always imagine a man in the same position. And I can't help feeling, Jerry, that if youreallyloved me—loved me in the whole crazy sense of that dreadful world, I mean—that you wouldn't speak so sweetly about the children: how could you? How can any man—I couldn't, if I were one!

But this is very unfair, because you never said you did love me in that way—don't imagine that I thought so for a moment. Jerry dear, my best friend now, for I must not count on Roger any more, do you think I am blind? Do you think I have been blind for three years? And will you think me a romantic, conceited fool when I say that unless I—even I, a widow and a jilt, who hurt a good man terribly and got well punished for it!—can have the kind of love that you can never give me, because you gave it to someone else three years ago, I don't want to accept your generous kindness? You see, I know how you can love, Jerry, just as I see now that I never knew how Roger could until those same three years ago. Of course he didn't either—wouldhe ever have known the difference, I wonder, if we had married?

And there is another reason, too. You might just as well know it, for my conceit is not pride really, and it may be you know it already. Whatever love Frederick failed to kill in me—and the very idea of passionate love almost nauseates me, even yet—is not in my power to give you, Jerry dear. It might, some day, later, wake again, but it would not be your touch that could wake it.

Now, since this is so of both of us, don't you see, dear, that things are better as they are? I promise you that if I ever need help, I will come to youfirst of all, since what you really want is to help me and make me comfortable and give me the pleasure of wide travel, you generous fellow! And if ever youreallyneed me, Jerry—but you won't, I am sure. No one else is quite what you are to me, or can be, now, and we must always be what we have always been—the best of friends. Tell me that you know I am right, and then let us never discuss it again.

Yoursalways,

Sue.

University Club, May 20th, 189—

Dear Jerry:Have just got back from a little Western trip (my brother and I exchanged pulpits for a month) and learned of Roger's illness and the accident. What a terrible thing, and how fortunate they were! I always liked that big dog, the fine, faithful fellow. Mrs. Bradley's leaving the stage was no great surprise to me: she came to New York to ask my advice about it just before the accident. We had a long talk, and though she by no means agreed at the time to everything I said on the subject, she did not seem opposed, herself, to much of it, in fact, she seemed very anxious to do the fair thing, it seemed to me. She appreciated perfectly that the more she did in one way the less she could do in another—how wonderful it is to think that she has never been to school in her life! It almost seems as if so much schooling were unnecessary, doesn't it, when association with educatedpeople can do so much in three years. Or perhaps it is only women that could absorb so quickly.I hope the doctors are wrong about her voice. They all say it will be a little husky always (though less and less so with time) and that singing, except in the quietest, smallest way, will be impossible. It does not seem to matter very much to her. She is looking very well indeed (you know, of course, that she is expecting another child in the autumn—Roger told me). He is quite magnificent with his thick, silvery hair, I think. Mr. Carter, who dined with me here at the club a night or two ago (he gave my boys a fine talk on German customs and military games) tells me that he hopes (Roger, I mean) to be able to do a great deal of his work on the Island—certainly all the summer and autumn. He seems to be turning into a sort of consulting lawyer, like a surgeon. Besides that great text-book business I suppose you know about. He says there are two or three years' work on that alone.I hope that you agree with me that Mrs. Bradley is much better off in her husband's home, fulfilling the natural duties of her sex. You seemed to think in your last that Mrs. Paynter would not, to my great surprise. What in the world is the matter with the women, nowadays? Where shall we be if the finest specimens of them have no leisure to perpetuate the race? Are only the stupid and unoriginal, unattractive ones to have this responsibility? I wish I dared get up a sermon on these lines; I may try yet!You know Mrs. Paynter well, Jerry—do you think there is any chance for me there? I have been for ten years proving that a minister need not be married, and I've done it, too, but it was only because I never met the woman I wanted. I have, now, but she won't have me. Does that mean it's final? I don't know much about women, but I can't believe one like her would refuse just to be asked again. Tell me what you think. She seems very decided, though she sympathises thoroughly with my work.

Dear Jerry:

Have just got back from a little Western trip (my brother and I exchanged pulpits for a month) and learned of Roger's illness and the accident. What a terrible thing, and how fortunate they were! I always liked that big dog, the fine, faithful fellow. Mrs. Bradley's leaving the stage was no great surprise to me: she came to New York to ask my advice about it just before the accident. We had a long talk, and though she by no means agreed at the time to everything I said on the subject, she did not seem opposed, herself, to much of it, in fact, she seemed very anxious to do the fair thing, it seemed to me. She appreciated perfectly that the more she did in one way the less she could do in another—how wonderful it is to think that she has never been to school in her life! It almost seems as if so much schooling were unnecessary, doesn't it, when association with educatedpeople can do so much in three years. Or perhaps it is only women that could absorb so quickly.

I hope the doctors are wrong about her voice. They all say it will be a little husky always (though less and less so with time) and that singing, except in the quietest, smallest way, will be impossible. It does not seem to matter very much to her. She is looking very well indeed (you know, of course, that she is expecting another child in the autumn—Roger told me). He is quite magnificent with his thick, silvery hair, I think. Mr. Carter, who dined with me here at the club a night or two ago (he gave my boys a fine talk on German customs and military games) tells me that he hopes (Roger, I mean) to be able to do a great deal of his work on the Island—certainly all the summer and autumn. He seems to be turning into a sort of consulting lawyer, like a surgeon. Besides that great text-book business I suppose you know about. He says there are two or three years' work on that alone.

I hope that you agree with me that Mrs. Bradley is much better off in her husband's home, fulfilling the natural duties of her sex. You seemed to think in your last that Mrs. Paynter would not, to my great surprise. What in the world is the matter with the women, nowadays? Where shall we be if the finest specimens of them have no leisure to perpetuate the race? Are only the stupid and unoriginal, unattractive ones to have this responsibility? I wish I dared get up a sermon on these lines; I may try yet!

You know Mrs. Paynter well, Jerry—do you think there is any chance for me there? I have been for ten years proving that a minister need not be married, and I've done it, too, but it was only because I never met the woman I wanted. I have, now, but she won't have me. Does that mean it's final? I don't know much about women, but I can't believe one like her would refuse just to be asked again. Tell me what you think. She seems very decided, though she sympathises thoroughly with my work.

Yours faithfully,

Tyler Fessenden Elder.

[From My Rough Diary]

May 30, 189—

Have just written Tip Elder how sorry I am about Sue, but that he'd better give it up. She'll never marry. How curiously we three are twisted into the Bradley weaving!M. so happy and beautiful—the past seems a dream. Voice lovely still, but not quite under her control always, and a tiny roughness in it that humanises, somehow—it wastooclear before, though that sounds absurd.Everybody wondering how everybody else will take her retirement. Strangely enough, no one regrets much, personally, but all sure the others will! Are we all more clear-sighted than we suppose—or more sentimental? Surgeon from Vienna has pronounced condition final. Either she is a wonderful actress or else we have overestimated her vocation; she seems absolutely contented. And yet, think of her triumphs! And of course, her greatest successes were all to come. Madame M—— is furious, but told Sue she had never trusted Roger—he was always too silent! "He has absorbed a great artist like so much blotting-paper!" she said. But he has got something into her eyes that Madame never saw there: we all agree on that. How did Alif put it—"Tis Allah sets the price, brother—we have but to pay." Well, she's paid. And old Roger, for that matter, and Sue, and Tip—and I. Who keeps the shop, I wonder?

Have just written Tip Elder how sorry I am about Sue, but that he'd better give it up. She'll never marry. How curiously we three are twisted into the Bradley weaving!

M. so happy and beautiful—the past seems a dream. Voice lovely still, but not quite under her control always, and a tiny roughness in it that humanises, somehow—it wastooclear before, though that sounds absurd.

Everybody wondering how everybody else will take her retirement. Strangely enough, no one regrets much, personally, but all sure the others will! Are we all more clear-sighted than we suppose—or more sentimental? Surgeon from Vienna has pronounced condition final. Either she is a wonderful actress or else we have overestimated her vocation; she seems absolutely contented. And yet, think of her triumphs! And of course, her greatest successes were all to come. Madame M—— is furious, but told Sue she had never trusted Roger—he was always too silent! "He has absorbed a great artist like so much blotting-paper!" she said. But he has got something into her eyes that Madame never saw there: we all agree on that. How did Alif put it—"Tis Allah sets the price, brother—we have but to pay." Well, she's paid. And old Roger, for that matter, and Sue, and Tip—and I. Who keeps the shop, I wonder?

To-day I went to Mary's wedding, and it has made me very thoughtful. She was very lovely—a great, blooming blonde, the image of Roger. They were a fine pair, as he held her on his arm: he looking younger than his sixty years, she older than her twenty, for all the children are wonderfully mature and well-developed.

She was nearly as tall as young Paynter, whose slenderness, however, is like steel. I well remember when Dr. McGee took him to North Carolina and made him over—a weak, irritable little precocity of twelve or so. He never ate or slept in a house for three years, and I think that the birds and trees of that period got into his opera and made it what it is, the musical event of a decade. He works best in Paris, and they will live there, after a honeymoon on the Island.

I don't think Mary was ever the favourite child, though each of the six thinks it is, Margarita is so wonderful with them! She cannot hide from me, who watch every light in her eye, that young Roger, the second child and oldest boy, means a shade more to her than the others, just as Roger, when he sits alone with Sue, the second daughter, talks to her more confidentially than to any of the others, and watches her yellow head most steadily when they are all swimming, off the Island wharf. They are both fine, big girls, just as Roger and my namesake are fine, big, steady fellows and little Lockwood is a fine, big, handsome child.

But my foolish old heart lost itself long ago to a pairof slate-blue eyes set in an olive face under dark, strong waves of hair, and when into that large, blonde brood there came a perfect baby Margarita, a slender, dark thing who flashed the summer twilight sky at one from under her long dark lashes, I claimed her for mine and mine she is—my Peggy. She is alone among the others, my precious black swan: her quaint, dreamy thoughts are not their practical, sunny clear-headedness, her self-peopled, solitary wanderings are not their merry comradeships, her lovely, statuesque movements are not their athletic tumbles. She stood to-day at her mother's knee in just the attitude S——n painted them for me, her eyes clouded with awe just as the bloom upon her mother's sweeping gown of velvet clouded its elusive blue, the soft plume upon her bride-maiden's hat leaned against the rich lace on her mother's breast. How beautiful they were! As I stared at them and their eyes lighted at the same moment with just the same dear smile, so that they were more than ever wonderfully alike, I heard a woman whisper behind me that the gentleman the beautiful Mrs. Bradley and her picturesque little daughter were smiling at was the child's godfather, an old friend—all his money left to her and his namesake, her brother. Before the whisper had ended Margarita the woman had turned her eyes toward her husband—they could not leave him long that day—but Margarita the child kept hers on me, and under them the years rolled back and I seemed to see a grave young girl sitting on the sand in a faded jersey, looking down into my heart and telling me that I loved her!

How many times since have I not seen her on that beach, cradling her rosy babies in her strong, smooth arms, murmuring with her graceful daughters, judging mildly between some claim of her tall, eager sons! How many summer evenings have I sat with Peggy in my arms and watched her pace that silvering beach with her husband, hand in hand like young lovers! I think they forget utterly that Time slips by, he passes them so gently.

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