You were asleep [he wrote] when I went to take leave of you, and on the whole I’m not sorry. A good-by is good at any distance, and I knew I could send you mine. I didn’t suppose I should be so long about it; but the truth is that what with putting my own business in order before going, and instructing myself about Mitchell & Martineiro’s, in a case where I can represent their interests only in an exterior sort of way, I have not had a moment that I could call yours. I might have sent you a line, of course, but I waited till I could do more than that. I knew you were getting well, and I need not worry about leaving you before you were quite well. And now, after all, when I have a few hours before sailing, and I sit down to write to you, I do not know that I have much to say. Perhaps if I had had days before this, it would have come to the same thing. In fact, it could have come only to one thing under any circumstances. It could have come only to my telling you, with whatever force I had, that in all our recent unhappiness I felt myself wholly and solely at fault. I do not merely mean that you were blameless, but that everyone else but myself was so. I hope this will not come to your eye like an impertinence; it lies under mine like a very vital thing. I do not know what your measure of my blame is, whether it has grown greater or not since we parted; but in my own sight my treatment of you seems inexpiable. Of course I feel that in this separation of ours there are many chances that we may not meet again; but I should like to say this to you if we were to meet every day all our lives. I will not appeal to the kindness of your heart; there ought to be none for me in it. But do not forget me, Easton; and if ever in the future you can think more leniently of me than I deserve, I shall be glad of your pity.
You were asleep [he wrote] when I went to take leave of you, and on the whole I’m not sorry. A good-by is good at any distance, and I knew I could send you mine. I didn’t suppose I should be so long about it; but the truth is that what with putting my own business in order before going, and instructing myself about Mitchell & Martineiro’s, in a case where I can represent their interests only in an exterior sort of way, I have not had a moment that I could call yours. I might have sent you a line, of course, but I waited till I could do more than that. I knew you were getting well, and I need not worry about leaving you before you were quite well. And now, after all, when I have a few hours before sailing, and I sit down to write to you, I do not know that I have much to say. Perhaps if I had had days before this, it would have come to the same thing. In fact, it could have come only to one thing under any circumstances. It could have come only to my telling you, with whatever force I had, that in all our recent unhappiness I felt myself wholly and solely at fault. I do not merely mean that you were blameless, but that everyone else but myself was so. I hope this will not come to your eye like an impertinence; it lies under mine like a very vital thing. I do not know what your measure of my blame is, whether it has grown greater or not since we parted; but in my own sight my treatment of you seems inexpiable. Of course I feel that in this separation of ours there are many chances that we may not meet again; but I should like to say this to you if we were to meet every day all our lives. I will not appeal to the kindness of your heart; there ought to be none for me in it. But do not forget me, Easton; and if ever in the future you can think more leniently of me than I deserve, I shall be glad of your pity.
“Is that all?” asked Mrs. Farrell, hoarsely.
“Yes, that’s all,” returned Easton, turning thepages absently over, and looking up and down the leaves.
Whatever had been her purposes, or hopes, or dreads, the moment had come from which she could not recoil, and in which she stood as absolutely unfriended as in the face of death. Everything had led to this at last; it might have been said that she was born for this alone, so supreme was it over all other fates and chances. If she had hoped for help from any source—from Easton’s possible suspicion, from the light in which she had tried to see what she had done with others’ eyes, from some confession of Gilbert’s in this letter of his—it was all in vain. Everything was remanded to her, and she was to make her choice, with none to urge or stay her. She sat and stared at the man who, she knew, would have given his life to defend her from others, but who was so powerless now to help her against herself. Of all the contending passions of her soul—shame, fear, resentment, and chiefly a frantic longing to discredit the reality of what was, and had been—a momentary scorn came uppermost.
“So!” she cried. “And that’s all he had to say!” She caught the letter from Easton’s hand, ran her eye swiftly over the closing page, and flung it back to him. “Yes, he was afraid to write it, two hundred miles away; he leaves it all to me. Well, then, I will tell you— Oh,” she broke off, “do you love me very, very much? Yes,Imust tell you, for there is no one else, and, no matter what happens, youmustknow it.” She looked at him in an agony of terror and pity; she could not take hereyes from him while she spoke the words that now came. “He was in love with me; he said so the last moment I saw him; he was so from the first. It was that which made him quarrel with you, and it is that which makes him—he thinks I’ve told you—ask your pity now.”
In the ghastly silence that ensued, they found that they had both risen, and he stood with one hand resting against the trunk of the birch beneath which they had been sitting; Gilbert’s letter had fallen, and lay on the ground between them.
Easton made no answer, and tried to make none, standing in a hapless maze. The silence seemed interminable; but it was also intolerable; she recalled him to himself with a wild “Well!” Then he seemed to find his voice a great way off, and a husky murmur preceded his articulate speech.
“Have I kept you apart?” he asked. “Do you love him?”
“Lovehim? Iloathehim!”
She shuddered to see the hope that rushed into his face, when he said, “Then I pity him with all my heart. How could he help loving you?”
She wrung her hands in despair. “Oh, why don’t you kill me, and spare me this. How can I tell you and make you understand? He never would have dared to speak to me if I had not— He never would have dared to speak if he had believed I loved you!”
“Doyou love me?” he asked, as if he regarded nothing else but that, and he searched with his clear gaze the eyes which she was powerless to avert.She tried to speak, and could not. The shame, more cruel than any crime can bring, which a man feels in such a disillusion, crimsoned his pale visage, and his head fell upon his breast. Again the terrible silence held them both.
“Oh, don’t, don’t!” she wailed, at last. “What must you think of me? Ididbelieve that I loved you once—that day when you asked me; and then when you were taken sick, and I thought you might die, how could I help caring for you? And afterward, when you were better, and you never showed any misgiving, Icouldn’tundeceive you; it had to go on. Ialwaysrespected you more than anyone in the world; you’re the best man I ever saw; better than I ever dreamed of; it frightened me to think how far too good for me you were. And why do you blame me so much, now?” she piteously implored. “You said, once, that you didn’t ask me to love you; that all you wanted was to love me.”
Easton rubbed his hand wearily over his forehead, and drew a long breath. “If I blamed you I was wrong,” he answered, gravely. “It was my fault.”
His hand began to tremble on the birch, and he sank down on the rock where he had been sitting. She saw his faltering, and dropped on her knees before him, and instinctively cast one arm about him to support him. He put it away. “I’m perfectly well,” he said, with his deathly face. “But I shall sit here awhile before I go back to the house. Don’t—don’t let me keep you.”
The dismissal seemed to strike her back from him, but she did not rise. She only dropped her face in the hollow of her rejected arm, and moaned, “Oh, how you must despise me! But don’t drive me from you!”
“I didn’t mean that,” he said; “I thought of sparing you.”
“But don’t spare me! It’s that that drives me wild. I want you to tell me what it is I’ve done. I want you to judge me.”
“Judge yourself, Rosabel. I will not.”
“But I can’t have any mercy on myself! Oh, keep me from myself! Don’t cast me off! I know I’m not worthy of you, but if you love me,takeme! I will be a good wife to you, indeed I will.”
“Oh no,” said Easton, in the tone of a man hurt beyond all solace, who faintly refuses some compassionately proffered, impossible kindness. “I have loved you, Heaven knows how dearly, and I could have waited patiently any length of time in the hope of your love; that was what I meant when I said I didn’t ask you to love me then. But now—”
She must have felt the exquisite manliness of his intention toward her. Perhaps she contrasted the grandeur which would not reproach her by a word or look, with the relentless bitterness in which Gilbert had retaliated all upon her. She had always admired Easton; it may be that in this moment she felt a thrill of the supreme tenderness. She suddenly clung to his arm. “But Iwantyou to take me!” she cried. “Don’t you trust me? Don’t youthink I know my own heart, even now? Oh, if you will only believe in me again, I know Ishalllove you!”
“No!” said Easton. “I love you too much for that.”
“And it is all over, then? Do you break your engagement?”
“It’s broken. You must go free of me. I know you would try to give me what you cannot; but only misery could come of trying. It would be worse than my mistake with Gilbert, when I accepted a sacrifice from him that no man should accept from another, because I believed that I could have done as much for him. We thought it our bond of friendship, but it must always have been a galling chain to him. And you are asking to do a thousand times more than he did! No, no; you would only be starving yourself to beggar me. If you loved me, all that’s happened would be nothing; but if you had married me, without loving me, you would have done me a wrong that I could never have pardoned. Don’t accuse yourself,” he said. “If you had loved me, nothing of all this could have happened. Think of that. It was my mistake more than yours; you were unfairly bound to me. Come,” he said, rising with a sudden access of strength that belied his pale looks, “I must go to-day.” And he led the way back to the house in a silence which neither broke.
She did not answer him by words, then or afterward. But when they entered the dark of the halldoorway together, she expressed all by an action which was not the less characteristic for being so humble and childlike; she caught up his hand, and, holding it a moment with a clinging stress, carried it to her mouth and reverently kissed it. That was their farewell, and it was both silent and passive on his part. He looked at her with eyes that she did not meet, and moved his lips as if he would say something, but made no sound.
THE next morning, after Mrs. Farrell had gone, Rachel went with mechanical exactness about the work of putting in order the room where Easton had lain sick. Her mother came to the door and, looking in, hesitated a moment before she crossed the threshold and sat down in the chair that stood just inside.
“I don’t know as you’ve got any call to hurry so about it, Rachel,” she said, with a granite quiet.
“I’d just as soon, mother; I’d rather,” answered the girl, as stonily, not ceasing from her work.
The mother put her hand to her passive mouth and then rubbed it up over her cheek and across her forehead, and drew a long, noiseless breath, following the movements of her daughter about the room with her eyes. “I suppose we sha’n’t hear from Benny, hardly, for a week or more,” she said, after a pause of several minutes. Rachel did not reply, and her mother asked, after another pause, “Rachel, what do you believe made him so set on going away? Do you think it was—”
“I don’t want you should ask me, mother,anything,” answered Rachel, nervously.
The mother waited a moment before she said, perhaps with that insensibility to others’ nerves which years often bring, “I was afraid the boymight have got to caring abouther. Do you think he had?”
“Yes, I think he had,” replied Rachel, abruptly, as if the words had been wrenched from her.
Once more the mother waited before she spoke. She had never talked gossip with her children, and perhaps she was now reconciling to her conscience the appearance of gossip in what she had to say. “I always thought,” she began, “that they were both as fine young men as I almost ever saw. I never saw more of a friend than the other one was to this one. Do you think she was much sorry for what she did to part them?”
“Yes, I think she was. She did more than she meant, and I don’t know as we ought to be made to answer for more harm than we mean.”
“No,” said Mrs. Woodward. “At least it isn’t for us to say, here. Did you like her as well at the last as you used to?”
“Yes, I liked her,” answered Rachel. “Nobody could help that. She was very unhappy, and I never had any call to feel hard against her—on my own account.”
“I don’t know as I ever knew a person quite like her,” mused Mrs. Woodward. “I don’t know as I should ever rightly understand her, and I won’t judge her, for one; she’ll find plenty to do that. I don’t believe but what her feelings were led away for a while by the other one, and I don’t see as they ever rightly came back to this one, even supposing that she ever did care much for him.”
“Oh, mother, mother, mother!” the girl brokeout, and cast herself into a chair, and hid her face on the bed.
A distress passed over the stony composure of the elder woman’s face, but she sat quiet, and did not go near her child or touch her. What comfort her children got from her went from heart to heart, or rather from conscience to conscience, without open demonstration; she hid her natural affections as if they were sins, but they ruled her in secret, and doubtless now her heart bled with the pity her arms withheld. She did not move from her place, and while the girl sobbed out the secret of a love which she had never yet owned to herself, the mother did not show by any sign or change of countenance that the revelation either surprised or shocked her. She may indeed have always suspected it, but however that was, she now accepted the fact as she would any calamity, in silence, and whatever inward trouble it gave her did not appear even to the solitude in which Rachel’s hidden face left her. She waited patiently, but when at last the girl lifted her face and sat with her head thrown back and her eyelids fallen, the mother still did not speak; she left her to deal with her pain alone, as was best. But that evening she came to Rachel’s chamber with her lamp in her hand, and took her place near her where she lay listless in her rocking-chair.
“Before Mrs. Gilbert went away,” the mother abruptly began, “she came and had a little talk with me about you, Rachel. I never told you, and I don’t know as I ever should.”
Rachel gave no token of interest. Mrs. Woodward went on:
“She seemed to think a good deal of that picture of yours, and she spoke as if you’d ought not to neglect any providence that put it in your way to improve yourself. I don’t use her words, but that’s what they come to in the end. She said if you would like to go down and study drawing in Boston or New York, this winter, she wanted I should let her lend you the money to do it. I was put to it what to say without seeming to hurt her feelings. I didn’t make any direct answer at the time, and I haven’t since. I wa’n’t sure in my own mind whether we should do right to accept of such an offer unless we could see our way clear to pay the money back, and what made me more doubtful was her saying that you’d ought to be very certain of your own feelings, whether you really wanted to be a painter or not, for if you didn’t it would be a misery every way if you was one. I don’t know a great deal about such things, but I thought that was sensible. She said there wa’n’t any doubt about your making a living that way, if once you gave your mind to it.”
Still Rachel did not change her posture or expression, but she passed her fingers over the hem of her apron across her lap.
“As to the money,” Mrs. Woodward went on, “there’s your school money in the bank; you’ve worked hard enough for that, and it’s rightfully yours. I know you meant to give it to James for his schooling, but now it don’t seem quite fair youshould. Why don’t you take it yourself, and go off somewheres, and study, the way Mrs. Gilbert said?”
“I don’t want the money, mother,” said the girl, coldly.
Mrs. Woodward waited awhile before she asked, “Don’t you feel sure ’t you want to study in that way?”
“Yes, I think I could do it. Of course it isn’t as if I were a man, but I believe I could be a painter, and I should like it better than teaching.”
“Then why don’t you take up with the idea? It would be a little change for you; and maybe, if you was away from the place for a while, you might—get to feeling differently.”
The mother was patient with her daughter while the girl sat thinking. The countenance of neither changed when at last the girl broke silence and said, very steadily, “I might go in the spring, mother. But I’m going to stay here this winter. If I’ve got any trouble, I can’t run away from it, and I wouldn’t if I could. If the trouble is here, the help is here, too, I presume.” After a little pause, she added, “I don’t want you should speak to me about it again, mother—ever.”
The mother said nothing, but awkwardly rose, and moved shyly to where her daughter sat. Her mouth trembled, but, whatever intent she had, she ended by merely laying on the girl’s head her large, toil-worn, kitchen-coarsened hand, with its bony knuckles and stubbed, broken nails. She let it rest there a moment and then went softly out of the room.
IN an orchestra chair at the theater sat a stout, good-natured-looking gentleman, iron gray where he was not bald, with a double chin smooth-shaven between iron-gray whiskers, and beside him sat a lady somewhat his junior in appearance, pale and invalid-like, to whom the strong contrast of her silvery hair and her thick, dark eyebrows gave a singular distinction; from some little attentions and neglects it could be seen that they were husband and wife. The husband seemed tranquilly expectant, and the wife nervously so, and as they talked together, waiting for the curtain to rise, he spoke in a slow, rich, easy voice, with a smile of amiable humor, while she had a more eager and sarcastic air, which at times did not veil a real anxiety of feeling.
“And that is just where you misconceive the whole affair,” the lady was saying.
“I don’t see,” said the gentleman.
“Why,” demanded the lady, despairingly, “can’t you imagine a woman’s liking to triumph over people with her beauty, and yet meaning it to be a purely æsthetic triumph?”
“No, I can’t,” said the gentleman, with placid candor.
“Well, women can,” said the lady, conclusively, and the gentleman submitted in silence.
Presently he asked, “Isn’t she rather old for a novice?”
“She’s twenty-six, if you call that old. She’s a novice to the stage, but she’s been an actress all her life.”
The gentleman laughed in the contented fashion of gentlemen who think their wives are wits, and said: “I think you’re decidedly hard upon her to-night, Susan. It seems to me you have been more merciful at times.”
“Oh, at times! I’ve never been of one mind about her half an hour together, and I don’t expect to be hard upon her the whole evening, now. The last day I saw her at the farm, as I’ve often told you, I pitied her from the bottom of my heart, but before we said good-by I suspected that I had been the subject of one of her little dramatic effects. Can’t you imagine a person who really feels all she thinks she ought to feel at any given time?”
“No,” said the gentleman, with cheerful resignation, “that’s beyond my depth again.”
“Well, she’s that kind; or I’ve fancied so in my skeptical moods about her. If she dramatizes her part to-night half as well as she used to dramatize herself, she’ll be a great actress. But that remains to be seen. When I first heard she was going on the stage, it seemed like a clew to everything; she says she always wanted to be an actress; and I felt that it was a perfect inspiration. It would give her excitement and admiration, and it would multiply the subjects of her effects to any extent. It always did seem a ridiculous waste that she should merely fascinate one man at a time; she ought to have had thousands. But I’m not so certain, now, after all, that she’s found her destiny.”
“Why?”
“Why, a stage success might be very much to her taste, while she mightn’t at all like the trouble of making it. I think she has a real theatrical genius, but I suppose the stage takes a great deal of self-denial and constancy, and she’s fickle as the wind.”
“Oh, come, now, Susan, you know you said yesterday that, after all, you did believe she had a lasting regard for William’s friend.”
“Yes, that’s a great puzzle and mystery. Perhaps it was because she had broken with him. I didn’t infer from anything she said that their acquaintance now was of anything but a friendly sort. I wish I had felt authorized to ask just how it was renewed,” said the lady, regretfully.
“I wish you had. I should have liked to know. There must be something extraordinary about her to enable her to keep him for a friend after all that happened.”
“Oh, did I ever pretend there wasn’t something extraordinary about her? There was everything extraordinary about her! And there are times when I can’t help admiring a sort of moral heroism she had. I think she was fascinated for a while with the dreadfulness of flirting with William under the circumstances; but not one woman in a thousand would have had the courage to do what she did when she found it was becoming serious with him.”
“Very likely. But I have a higher opinion of women. My sense of right and wrong has not been shaken, like some people’s, by this enchantress. I can’t help thinking it might not have been so rough onhimif her moral heroism had begun a little sooner—say before the flirtation.”
“Oh, the more I think about it, the less I pity him in that matter. He knew perfectly well that he was doing wrong. Men ought to do right, even if it doesn’t please women.”
The gentleman bowed his bald head in a fit of laughter. “I have no doubt those were Eve’s very words to Adam,” he chuckled; but the lady, without laughing, continued—
“And when the worst had come to the worst with Easton, it seems she didn’t spare herself. She told him everything.”
“Perhaps she might have sparedhimsomewhat if she had not been quite so frank.”
“It was herdutyto tell him!” rejoined the lady, sternly, “and I honor her for doing it. She never could have gone on and married him, with all that in her heart.”
“At any rate she didn’t go on and marry him. And I shall always contend that she was a hardly used woman; engaging herself to a man she merely pitied, under the mistaken impression that she was in love with him, and then—when she found that she didn’t want his friend either—dismissing thepoor fellow with a final misgiving that perhaps shedidlike him, after all. I say it’s a case of unmerited suffering, if ever there was one.”
“Oh, it’s all very well to talk! But how do you reconcile such contradictions?”
“I don’t. But I’m certain of one thing: she wasn’t trying any of her little dramatic effects on you when she called yesterday and made you her confidante.” The gentleman here laughed so loud that the sound of his own voice alarmed him. He looked round, and saw that the seats about them were rapidly filling up, and he fell to studying his play-bill with conscious zeal.
By and by he turned again to his wife, and whispered, “I don’t think William’s peace of mind was permanently affected by his romance with your friend; he appeared to be in good spirits the other day when I saw him in New York, and was taking a good deal of interest in the fine arts, I fancied, from his behavior to your little protégée.”
“William has been very polite and very good; I shall always feel grateful to him for his kindness to her. He must have found it difficult at first; she’s very odd and doesn’t invite attention, though of course she’s glad of it, at heart. Yes, it was very, very considerate, and I shall take it as the greatest favor that William could have done me.”
“Well, I don’t know. He didn’t seem to be regarding the affair in the light of a self-sacrifice. Suppose he had rather lost the sense of it’s being a favor to you?”
“I should like that all the better.”
Those who remember the impression made among people who knew of her, by the announcement that Mrs. Farrell was going upon the stage, will recall the curiosity which attended her appearance in Boston, after her debut in a Western city, where she had played a season. There is always something vastly pitiable in the first attempts of a woman to please the public from the stage; this is especially the case if she is not to the theater born, and confronts in her audience the faces she has known in the world; and her audience may have felt a peculiar forlornness in Mrs. Farrell’s position: at any rate it showed itself the kindest of houses, and seized with eager applause every good point of her performance. Her beauty in itself was almost sufficient to achieve success for her. It had never appeared to greater advantage. During the first two acts, it seemed to prosper from moment to moment, under all those admiring eyes, like the immediate gift of Heaven, as if she were inspired to be more and more beautiful by her consciousness of her beauty’s power; and whether she walked or sat, or only stirred in some chosen posture amid the volume of her robes, she expressed a grace that divinely fascinated. Her girlish presence enabled her to realize that Juliet to many whose sensitive ideal refused the robust pretensions of more mature actresses; she might have played the part well or not, but there could be no question but she looked it. She had costumed it with a splendor which the modern taste might have accused of overdressing, but which was not discordant with a poetic sense ofthe magnificence of mediæval Verona. Her Juliet was no blond, Gretchen-like maiden in blue and white, but an impassioned southern girl in the dark reds and rich greens that go well with that beauty; she might have studied her dress from that of some superb patrician in a canvas of Cagliari. But with her beauty, her grace, and her genius for looking and dressing the character, her perfect triumph ended; there was something perplexingly indefinite in the nature or the cause of her failure, at those points where she failed. To some she simply appeared unequal to a sustained imagination of the character. Others thought her fatigued by the physical effort, which must be a very great one. Perhaps no one was of a very decided mind about her performance.
“It was good, yes—and it wasn’t good, either,” said one of those critical spirits, rather commoner in Boston than elsewhere, who analyze and refine and re-refine and shrink from a final impression, with a perseverance that leaves one in doubt whether they have any opinion about the matter. “I should say she had genius, yes; genius for something— I don’t know; I suppose the drama. I dare say I saw her without the proper perspective; I was crowded so close to her by what I’d heard of her off the stage, don’t you know. I don’t think the part was well chosen; and yet she did some things uncommonly well; all that passionate lovemaking of the first part was magnificent; but there was some detracting element, even there— I don’t know what; I suppose she didn’t let you think enough of Juliet; you couldn’t help thinking how very charmingshewas, herself; she realized the part the wrong way. There was inspiration in it, and I should say study; yes, there was a good deal of study; but, after all, it wasn’t so much art as it was nature and artifice. It wanted smoothness, unity; perhaps that might come, by and by. She had a very kind house; you know what our audiences usually are; they wouldn’t turn the thumb down, but they’d make an unlucky gladiatorwishthey would. But they were very good to her, last night, and applauded her hits like a little man. She didn’t seem to have givenherselfa fair chance. Perhaps she wasn’t artistically large enough for the theater. I shouldn’t have said, at first, that she was particularly suggestive of the home circle; very likely, if I’d met her off the stage, I should have pronounced her too theatrical; and yet there was a sort of appealing domesticity about her, after all—especially in her failures. It’s a pity she couldn’t take some particular line of the profession, in which she could somehow produce asocialeffect, don’t you know! I’ll tell you what; she could do something perfectly charming in the way of what they call sketches—character sketches—little morsels of drama that she could have all to herself, with the audience in her confidence—a sort of partner in the enterprise, like the audience at private theatricals. That’s it; that’s the very thing! She’d be the greatest possible success in private theatricals.”
“Well, Robert, it’s better than I ever dreamt she could do,” said Mrs. Gilbert, as they drove home from the theater. “But what a life for a woman! How hard and desolate at the best. Well, she’s sufficiently punished!”
“Yes,” said her husband, “it’s a great pity they couldn’t somehow make up their minds to marry each other.”
“Never! There are things they can never get over.”
“Oh, people get over all sorts of things. And even according to your own showing, she behaved very well when it came to the worst.”
“Yes, I shall always say that of her. But she was to blame for it’s coming to the worst. No, a whole lifetime wouldn’t be enough to atone for what she’s done.”
“It wouldn’t, in a romance. But in life you have to make some allowance for human nature. I had no idea she was so charming.”
“Robert,” said Mrs. Gilbert, sternly, “do you think it would be right for a woman to be happy after she had made others so wretched?”
“Well, not at once. But I don’t see how her remaining unhappy is to help matters. You say that you really think she does like him, after all?”
“She would hardly talk of anything else—where he was, and what he saw, and what he said. Yes, I should say she does like him.”
“Then I don’t see why he shouldn’t come back from Europe and marry her, when she makes her final failure on the stage. I would, in his place.”
“My dear, youknowyou wouldn’t!”
“Well, then,hewould inmyplace. Have it your own way, my love.”
Mr. Gilbert seemed to think he had made a joke, but his wife did not share his laugh.
“Robert,” she said, after a thoughtful pause, “the lenient way in which you look at her is worse than wrong; it’s weak.”
“Very likely, my dear; but I can’t help feeling it’s a noble weakness. Why, of course I know that she spread a ruin round, for a while, but, as you say, it seems to have been more of a ruin than she meant; and there’s every probability that she’s been sorry enough for it since.”
“Oh! And so you think such a person as that can change by trying—and atone for what she’s done by beingsorryfor it!” said Mrs. Gilbert, with scorn.
“Well, Susan, I should not like to be such a heathen asnotto thinkso,” responded her husband, with an assumption none the less intolerable because, while his position was in itself impregnable, it left a thousand things to be said.
THE END
Books by Younger English WritersCALIBANBy W. L. GeorgeThe romance of a newspaper genius. He had become—this common London boy—Lord Bulmer of Bayne. And yet at the height of all his power he stood helpless as a child before one woman.HAIL, COLUMBIA!By W. L. GeorgeRead what this delightful English novelist thinks of you and other Americans. H. L. Mencken calls it, “One of the most intelligent volumes on these states and their people ever written by a visiting man of letters.”RICH RELATIVESBy Compton MackenzieThis new novel, about Jasmine Grant, eighteen and an orphan, who was “given a home” by four families of rich relatives, gives full play to Compton Mackenzie’s subtle humor and irony.THE VANITY GIRLBy Compton MackenzieDorothy Lonsdale, musical comedy star, played among the nobility for a husband—and won. But the life she had not foreseen came later when Clarehaven, gambling with love—with fortune—with life—lost all.NOW IT CAN BE TOLDBy Philip GibbsThe best seller among serious books for 1920. Critics have called these revelations—which Sir Philip Gibbs could not make during the war—some of the most thrilling, dramatic and permanently valuable literature that has come out of the war.MORE THAT MUST BE TOLDBy Philip GibbsThe same kind of astounding revelations of presentday conditions in Europe that Sir Philip Gibbs made about the war in his famousNow It Can Be Told.HARPER & BROTHERSFranklin SquareNew York
Books by Younger English Writers
CALIBAN
By W. L. George
The romance of a newspaper genius. He had become—this common London boy—Lord Bulmer of Bayne. And yet at the height of all his power he stood helpless as a child before one woman.
HAIL, COLUMBIA!
By W. L. George
Read what this delightful English novelist thinks of you and other Americans. H. L. Mencken calls it, “One of the most intelligent volumes on these states and their people ever written by a visiting man of letters.”
RICH RELATIVES
By Compton Mackenzie
This new novel, about Jasmine Grant, eighteen and an orphan, who was “given a home” by four families of rich relatives, gives full play to Compton Mackenzie’s subtle humor and irony.
THE VANITY GIRL
By Compton Mackenzie
Dorothy Lonsdale, musical comedy star, played among the nobility for a husband—and won. But the life she had not foreseen came later when Clarehaven, gambling with love—with fortune—with life—lost all.
NOW IT CAN BE TOLD
By Philip Gibbs
The best seller among serious books for 1920. Critics have called these revelations—which Sir Philip Gibbs could not make during the war—some of the most thrilling, dramatic and permanently valuable literature that has come out of the war.
MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD
By Philip Gibbs
The same kind of astounding revelations of presentday conditions in Europe that Sir Philip Gibbs made about the war in his famousNow It Can Be Told.
HARPER & BROTHERS
Franklin SquareNew York
Life Stories of Famous AmericansMARK TWAIN: A BiographyBy Albert Bigelow PaineMr. Paine gave six years to the writing of this famous life history, traveling half way round the world to follow in the footsteps of his subject; during four years of the time he lived in daily association with Mark Twain, visited all the places and interviewed every one who could shed any light upon his subject.EDISON:His Life and InventionsBy Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford MartinThe authors are men both close to Edison. One of them is his counsel, and practically shares his daily life; the other is one of his leading electrical experts. It is the personal story of Edison and has been read and revised by Edison himself.MY QUARTER CENTURY OF AMERICAN POLITICSBy Champ ClarkA fascinating story of one of the most prominent and best liked men in American political history of our times, which will appeal to persons of all shades of political belief. The book is not only interesting, but highly important as a permanent record of our generation.Illustrated.LIFE OF THOMAS NASTBy Albert Bigelow PaineThe story of America’s first and foremost cartoonist; the man who originated all the symbols; whose pictures elected presidents and broke up the Tweed ring. More than four hundred reproductions of Nast’s choicest work.HARPER & BROTHERSFranklin SquareNew York
Life Stories of Famous Americans
MARK TWAIN: A Biography
By Albert Bigelow Paine
Mr. Paine gave six years to the writing of this famous life history, traveling half way round the world to follow in the footsteps of his subject; during four years of the time he lived in daily association with Mark Twain, visited all the places and interviewed every one who could shed any light upon his subject.
EDISON:His Life and Inventions
By Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
The authors are men both close to Edison. One of them is his counsel, and practically shares his daily life; the other is one of his leading electrical experts. It is the personal story of Edison and has been read and revised by Edison himself.
MY QUARTER CENTURY OF AMERICAN POLITICS
By Champ Clark
A fascinating story of one of the most prominent and best liked men in American political history of our times, which will appeal to persons of all shades of political belief. The book is not only interesting, but highly important as a permanent record of our generation.Illustrated.
LIFE OF THOMAS NAST
By Albert Bigelow Paine
The story of America’s first and foremost cartoonist; the man who originated all the symbols; whose pictures elected presidents and broke up the Tweed ring. More than four hundred reproductions of Nast’s choicest work.
HARPER & BROTHERS
Franklin SquareNew York