"My niece will come out to-morrow," she said, graciously.
"Yes? She is a real fine-appearing young lady," said Mrs. Winslow.
Both the cyclists exulted. Neither of them, however, was prepared to behold the track made and the fence down the very next morning when they came out, about ten o'clock, to the west side of Miss Hopkins' boundaries.
"As sure as you live, Maggie," exclaimed Lorania, eagerly, "he's got it all done! Now, that is something like a lover. I only hope his heart won't be bruised as black and blue as I am with the wheel!"
"Shuey says the only harm your falls do you is to take away your confidence," said Mrs. Ellis.
"He wouldn't say so if he could see myknees!" retorted Miss Hopkins.
Mrs. Ellis, it will be observed, sheered away from the love affairs of Mr. Cyril Winslow. She had not yet made up her mind. And Mrs. Ellis, who had been married, did not jump at conclusions regarding the heart of man so readily as her spinster friend. She preferred to talk of the bicycle. Nor did Miss Hopkins refuse the subject. To her at this moment the most important object on the globe was the shining machine which she would allow no hand but hers to oil and dust. Both Mrs. Ellis and she were simply prostrated (as to their mental powers) by this new sport. They could not think nor talk nor read of anything butthe wheel.
Between their accidents, they obtained glimpses of an exquisite exhilaration. And there was also to be counted the approval of their consciences, for they felt that no Turkish bath could wring out moisture from their systems like half an hour's pumping at the bicycle treadles. Lorania during the month had ridden through one bottle of liniment and two of witch hazel, and by the end of the second bottle could ride a short distance alone. But Lorania could not yet dismount unassisted, and several times she had felled poor Winslow to the earth when he rashly adventured to stop her. Captain Carr had a peculiar, graceful fling of the arm, catching the saddle bar with one hand while he steadied the handles with the other. He did not hesitate in the least to grab Lorania's belt if necessary. But poor modest Winslow, who fell upon the wheel and dared not touch the hem of a lady's bicycle skirt, was as one in the path of a cyclone, and appeared daily in a fresh pair of white trousers.
"Yous have now," Shuey remarked impressively, one day—"yous have now arrived at the most difficult and dangerous period in learning the wheel. It's similar to a baby when it's first learned to walk but ain't yet got sense in walking. When it was little it would stay put wherever ye put it, and it didn't know enough to go by itself, which is similar to you. When I was holding ye you couldn't fall, but now you're off alone depindent on yourself, object-struck by every tree, taking most of the pasture to turn in, and not able to git off save by falling—"
"Oh, couldn't you go with her somehow?" exclaimed Mrs. Winslow, appalled at the picture. "Wouldn't a rope round her be some help? I used to put it round Cyril when he was learning to walk."
"Well, no, ma'am," said Shuey, patiently. "Don't you be scared; the riding will come; she's getting on grandly. And ye should see Mr. Winslow. 'Tis a pleasure to teach him. He rode in one lesson. I ain't learning him nothing but tricks now."
"But, Mr. Winslow, why don't you ride here—with us?" said Sibyl, with her coquettish and flattering smile. "We're always hearing of your beautiful riding. Are we never to see it?"
"I think Mr. Winslow is waiting for that swell English cycle suit that I hear about," said the captain, grinning; and Winslow grew red to his eyelids.
Lorania gave an indignant side glance at Sibyl. Why need the girl make game of an honest man who loved her? Sibyl was biting her lips and darting side glances at the captain. She called the pasture practice slow, but she seemed, nevertheless, to enjoy herself sitting on the bench, the captain on one side and Winslow on the other, rattling off her girlish jokes, while her aunt and Mrs. Ellis, with the anxious, set faces of the beginner, were pedalling frantically after Cardigan. Lorania began to pity Winslow, for it was growing plain to her that Sibyl and the captain understood each other. She thought that even if Sibyl did care for the soldier, she need not be so careless of Winslow's feelings. She talked with the cashier herself, trying to make amends for Sibyl's absorption in the other man, and she admired the fortitude that concealed the pain that he must feel. It became quite the expected thing for the Winslows to be present at the practice; but Winslow had not yet appeared on his wheel. He used to bring a box of candy with him, or rather three boxes—one for each lady, he said—and a box of peppermints for his mother. He was always very attentive to his mother.
"And fancy, Aunt Margaret," laughed Sibyl, "he has asked both auntie and me to the theater. He is not going to compromise himself by singling one of us out. He's a careful soul. By the way, Aunt Margaret, Mrs. Winslow was telling me yesterday that I am the image of auntie at my age. Am I? Do I look like her? Was she as slender as I?"
"Almost," said Mrs. Ellis, who was not so inflexibly truthful as her friend.
"No, Sibyl," said Lorania, with a deep, deep sigh, "I was always plump; I was a chubbychild! And oh, what do you think I heard in the crowd at Manly's once? One woman said to another, 'Miss Hopkins has got a wheel.' 'Miss Sibyl?' said the other. 'No; the stout Miss Hopkins,' said the first creature; and the second—" Lorania groaned.
"Whatdidshe say to make you feel that way?"
"She said—she said, 'Oh, my!'" answered Lorania, with a dying look.
"Well, she was horrid," said Mrs. Ellis; "but you know you have grown thin. Come on; let's ride!"
"Inevershall be able to ride," said Lorania, gloomily. "I can get on, but I can't get off. And they've taken off the brake, so I can't stop. And I'm object-struck by everything I look at. Some day I shall look down hill. Well, my will's in the lower drawer of the mahogany desk."
Perhaps Lorania had an occult inkling of the future. For this is what happened: That evening Winslow rode on to the track in his new English bicycle suit, which had just come. He hoped that he didn't look like a fool in those queer clothes. But the instant he entered the pasture he saw something that drove everything else out of his head, and made him bend over the steering-bar and race madly across the green; Miss Hopkins' bicycle was running away down hill! Cardigan, on foot, was pelting obliquely, in the hopeless thought to intercept her, while Mrs. Ellis, who was reeling over the ground with her own bicycle, wheeled as rapidly as she could to the brow of the hill, where she tumbled off, and, abandoning the wheel, rushed on foot to her friend's rescue.
She was only in time to see a flash of silver and ebony and a streak of brown dart before her vision and swim down the hill like a bird. Lorania was still in the saddle, pedalling from sheer force of habit, and clinging to the handle-bars. Below the hill was a stone wall, and farther was the creek. There was a narrow opening in the wall where the cattle went down to drink; if she could steer through that she would have nothing worse than soft water and mud; but there was not one chance in a thousand that she could pass that narrow space. Mrs. Winslow, horror-stricken, watched the rescuer, who evidently was cutting across to catch the bicycle.
"He's riding out of sight!" thought Shuey, in the rear. He himself did not slacken his speed, although he could not be in time for the catastrophe. Suddenly he stiffened; Winslow was close to the runaway wheel.
"Grab her!" yelled Shuey. "Grab her by the belt!Oh, Lord!"
The exclamation exploded like the groan of a shell. For while Winslow's bicycling was all that could be wished, and he flung himself in the path of the on-coming wheel with marvelous celerity and precision, he had not the power to withstand the never yet revealed number of pounds carried by Miss Lorania, impelled by the rapid descent and gathering momentum at every whirl. They met; he caught her; but instantly he was rolling down the steep incline and she was doubled up on the grass. He crashed sickeningly against the stone wall; she lay stunned and still on the sod; and their friends, with beating hearts, slid down to them. Mrs. Winslow was on the brow of the hill. She blesses Shuey to this day for the shout he sent up, "Nobody killed, and I guess no bones broken."
When Margaret went home that evening, having seen her friend safely in bed, not much the worse for her fall, she was told that Cardigan wished to see her. Shuey produced something from his pocket, saying: "I picked this up on the hill, ma'am, after the accident. It maybe belongs to him, or it maybe belongs to her; I'm thinking the safest way is to just give it to you." He handed Mrs. Ellis a tiny gold-framed miniature of Lorania in a red leather case.
The morning was a sparkling June morning, dewy and fragrant, and the sunlight burnished the handles and pedals of the friends' bicycles standing on the piazza unheeded. It was the hour for morning practice, but Miss Hopkins slept in her chamber, and Mrs. Ellis sat in the little parlor adjoining, and thought.
She did not look surprised at the maid's announcement that Mrs. Winslow begged to see her for a few moments. Mrs. Winslow was pale. She was a good sketch of discomfort on the very edge of her chair, clad in the black silk which she wore Sundays, her head crowned with her bonnet of state, and her hands stiff in a pair of new gloves.
"I hope you'll excuse me not sending up a card," she began. "Cyril got me some going on a year ago, and IthoughtI could lay my hand right on 'em, but I'm so nervous this morning I hunted all over, and they wasn't anywhere. I won't keep you. I jest wanted to ask if you picked up anything—a little red Russia-leather case—"
"Was it a miniature—a miniature of my friend Miss Hopkins?"
"I thought it all over, and I came to explain. You no doubt think it strange; and I can assure you that my son never let any human being look at that picture. I never knew about it myself till it was lost and he got up out of his bed—he ain't hardly able to walk—and staggered over here to look for it, and I followed him; and so hehadto tell me. He had it painted from a picture that came out in the papers. He felt it was an awful liberty. But—you don't know how my boy feels, Mrs. Ellis; he has worshipped that woman for years. He ain't never had a thought of anybody but her since they was children in school; and yet's he's been so modest and so shy of pushing himself forward that he didn't do a thing until I put him on to help you with this bicycle."
Margaret Ellis did not know what to say. She thought of the marquis; and Mrs. Winslow poured out her story: "He ain't never said a word to me till this morning. But don't Iknow? Don't I know who looked out so careful for her investments? Don't I know who was always looking out for her interest—silent, and always keeping himself in the background? Why, she couldn't even buy a cow that he wa'n't looking round to see that she got a good one! 'Twas him saw the gardener, and kept him from buying that cow with tuberculosis, 'cause he knew about the herd. He knew by finding out. He worshipped the very cows she owned, you may say, and I've seen him patting and feeding up her dogs; it's to our house that big mastiff always goes every night. Mrs. Ellis, it ain't often that a woman gits love such as my son is offering, only he da'sn't offer it, and it ain't often a woman is loved by such a good man as my son. He ain't got any bad habits; he'll die before he wrongs anybody; and he has got the sweetest temper you ever see; and he's the tidiest man about a house you could ask, and the promptest about meals."
Mrs. Ellis looked at her flushed face, and sent another flood of color into it, for she said, "Mrs. Winslow, I don't know how much good I may be able to do, but I am on your side."
Her eyes followed the little black figure when it crossed the lawn. She wondered whether her advice was good, for she had counseled that Winslow come over in the evening.
"Maggie," said a voice. Lorania was in the doorway. "Maggie," she said, "I ought to tell you that I heard every word."
"ThenIcan tellyou," cried Mrs. Ellis, "that he is fifty times more of a man than the marquis, and loves you fifty thousand times better!"
Lorania made no answer, not even by a look. What she felt Mrs. Ellis could not guess. Nor was she any wiser when Winslow appeared at her gate, just as the sun was setting.
"I didn't think I would better intrude on Miss Hopkins," said he, "but perhaps you could tell me how she is this evening. My mother told me how kind you were, and perhaps you—you would advise me if I might venture to send Miss Hopkins some flowers."
Out of the kindness of her heart Mrs. Ellis averted her eyes from his face; thus she was able to perceive Lorania saunter out of the Hopkins gate. So changed was she by the bicycle practice that, wrapped in her niece's shawl, she made Margaret think of the girl. An inspiration flashed to her; she knew the cashier's dependence on his eye-glasses, and he was not wearing them.
"If you want to know how Miss Hopkins is, why not speak to her niece now?" she said.
He started. He saw Miss Sibyl, as he supposed, and he went swiftly down the street. "Miss Sibyl," he began, "may I ask how is your aunt?"—and then she turned.
She blushed, then she laughed aloud. "Has the bicycle done so much for me?" said she.
"The bicycle didn't need to doanythingfor you!" he cried, warmly.
Mrs. Ellis, a little distance in the rear, heard, turned, and walked thoughtfully away. "They're off," said she—she had acquired a sporting tinge of thought from Shuey Cardigan. "If with that start he can't make the running, it's a wonder."
"I have invited Mr. Winslow and his mother to dinner," said Miss Hopkins, in the morning. "Will you come too, Maggie?"
"I'll back him against the marquis," thought Margaret, gleefully.
A week later Lorania said: "I really think I must be getting thinner. Fancy Mr. Winslow, who is so clear-sighted, mistaking me for Sibyl! He says—I told him how I had suffered from my figure—he says it can't be what he has suffered from his. Do you think him so very short, Maggie? Of course he isn't tall, but he has an elegant figure, I think, and I never saw anywhere such a rider!"
Mrs. Ellis answered, heartily: "He isn't very small, and he is a beautiful figure on the wheel!" And added to herself, "I know what was in that letter she sent yesterday to the marquis! But to think of its all being due to the bicycle!"
Not long since the writer had occasion to pass through the scene of this story. It would be hard to find anywhere a more pleasant and prosperous land. Fertile fields and shady country roads and pastures where sleek cattle are contentedly grazing; great stacks of green alfalfa; farmhouses with flowers and vines, as well as thriving kitchen gardens; windmills that pipe houses with water as well as fill the barn troughs; automobiles and good roads—there could hardly be a greater contrast. And it is pleasant to hear that the pioneers who suffered incredible hardships during the lean years are now reaping the reward of their toil, courage and versatile, indomitable ingenuity.
The frozen soil rattled under the horses' hoofs; the wagon wheels rattled on their own account. A December wind was keen enough to make the driver wrap his patched quilt closer and pull his battered straw hat lower over his ears. He was a man of thirty, with high, tanned features and eyes that would have been handsome but for their sullen frown.
"I should call it getting good and ready for a blizzard," observed the other man on the board (seat the wagon had none); "maybe he won't come."
"He'll come fast enough," returned the driver; "you don't catch buzzards staying in for weather!"
"I don't know. He's a pretty luxurious young scoundrel. Bixby says he had a letter from him—very particular about a fire in his room, and plenty of hot water and towels. Bixby is worried lest the boys make a fuss with him in his hotel."
"Bixby is a coward from Wayback," was the driver's single comment or reply. The other man eyed the dark profile at his shoulder, out of the tail of his eye rubbing his hands up and down his wrists under his frayed sleeves. He was a young man, shorter of stature than the driver. He had a round, genial, tanned face, and a bad cold on him. His hands were bare because he had lent his mittens to the driver; but he wore a warm, if shabby greatcoat and a worn fur cap.
"I don't suppose," he said in a careless tone, "you fellows mean to do more than scare the lad well."
"We scared the last man. Doc Russell got him fairly paralyzed; told him 'bout the Shylock that turned out the Kinneys, and Miss Kinney's dying in the wagon, she was so weak; and Kin—somebody ('course he didn't mention names) shooting that man; and their arresting Kinney, and the jury acquitting him without leaving the box. Oh, he told a lot of stories. Some of 'em, I guess, he made up out of his own head; but that Iowa lawyer swallered the whole batch, hide and hoofs and all. And he couldn't git out of town quick enough! But what's the good? Here's this young dude come again. Say, did you know it's his pa that owns most of the stock in the trust?"
"No?"
"Yes, sir. He's got the upper hand of 'em all. They've bought up every last bit of foreclosed land 'round here. Yes, we was so mighty smart, we fixed it that nobody'd dare to buy; and nobody 'round herewoulddare, even s'posing they got the money, which they ain't—"
"There certainly ain't much loose money 'round here, Wesley. At least, when I ran the paper I didn't find it; I was glad to rent an abandoned farm and trade my subscription list for enough corn to pay the first instalment on some stock and a cultivator."
"Did you pay any more?"
"No; times got worse instead of better. I'd have lost the stock and the cultivator and every blamed thing in the way of implement I've got if it hadn't been for you fellows running the implement man out of the country; he'd a chattel mortgage that was a terror. But what were you saying about the land? Nobody would buy?"
"Of course nobody would buy, and we hugged ourselves we was so durned slick. Oh, my! Now, here comes along one of them bloody trusts that's eating this country up, and goes to the land company and buys the foreclosed land for a song. It goes all the cheaper because its known far and wide that we elected the sheriff not to enforce writs, but to resist 'em; and the same with all the officers; and we're ready to shoot down any man that tries to push us off the earth. That scared folks, and the investment company sold cheap as dirt. They knew they couldn't git anybody to take up a farm 'round here. Look a' there!" He jerked the point of the switch that served for whip in the direction of a dark bulk looming against the glowing belt of red in the west. The outlines of a ruined chimney toppled over the misshapen roof. The door and window openings gaped forlornly; doors and windows were gone long since, wrenched off for other needs. Bit by bit the house had been nibbled at—here a porch platform taken, there a patch of weather-boarding, shingles pulled from the roof, the corn crib a wreck, the outbuildings carried away piece-meal—until, a sadder ruin than fire leaves, it faced the sunset and the prairie.
"That farm belonged to as hard-working, smart a feller as ever handled a plow. Look at them fields, gone to desolation like everything else, but the furrows used to be as straight's a line with a ruler. He fought the hard times and the drought till his wife died, and then he said to me, 'I'm beat; I'm going to take the baby back to Winnie's folks. If I'd only gone last year I could have took Winnie, too. The company kin have my farm, and I hope to God it'll be the curse to them it's been to me!' There the farm is. And look further down"—shifting the switch to another direction—"there's another dropping to pieces. Lord, when I think of the stories they told me about the crops when I fust came and put in four hundred dollars that I'd worked hard for in a saw-mill, and I think how we used to set 'round the fire evenings, my wife and I, talking about how the town was a-growing and what it would be when the trees was growed and our children was going to school, and how we'd have a cabinet organ and we'd have a top buggy, and we'd send for her mother, who didn't jest like it with Bill's wife—we was jest like children, making believe! But that ain't what I was driving at. Here it is. We calculated that we'd be let alone, because the poor, miserable remnants of stock and machines and farms we got simply wasn't worth outside folks taking, and inside folks wouldn't risk their lives by dispossessing us. That's how we sized it up, ain't it?"
"I don't see yet what you're after, Wesley."
"You will. We reasoned that way. But along comes this company, this—trust, that's clean against the laws and don't give a curse for that, and it buys up the whole outfit. I tell you, Mr. Robbins, there ain't five men in this community that that trust ain't got the legal right to turn out on the prairies to-morrow. They've all been foreclosed, and the year of grace is up. Most of us here ain't got no show at all—legally. And so they send a man down here to see about gitting out writs and finishing us up."
"But who'll they get to buy, Wesley Orr?"
"They're not needing much buying. They're on to a new scheme—going to turn all these farms into big pastures and fatten cattle with alfalfa, raise it and ship it; then the lower part of the county, down below town, they intend to run a ditch through from the river and irrigate it. They will fetch in a colony who'll pay them about ten times what they paid, I expect, and—"
"But we won't let them—"
"Depends on how many guns the colony's got and how much fight there's in it. They'll try it, anyhow, unless—"
"Unless—" repeated Robbins uneasily.
"Unless they're scared off,unless they think it's death for a man to tackle us."
Robbins rubbed his hands harder; he bit his lip. A little space of silence fell between them. Off to the south, where the little town was set like an island in the darkening prairie, the lights began to twinkle; they were yellow and scattered. Even at that distance one could tell that they burned few to the house.
"I kinder wish," said Robbins, "that he came from another town."
"What's the difference about the town?"
"Oh, none, I guess. But that town, it's in Iowa, and it sent the best things we've ever had. One woman put in a lot of jams and jellies and tea—such tea! My wife was sick then, and I didn't know but I'd lose her. I gave her some of that tea and some jam, and she began to pick up from that day. It was a quince jam, and made her think of home, she said. Her father was a Connecticut man, and they had an orchard with quince trees in it—I remember—" He did not finish the sentence, but he sighed as he absently ran his eye over the gaps in the harness mended with rope.
"I bethedidn't have nothing to do with that box," said Orr; "most like, the people sent us that were poor folks themselves, and had to pinch to make up for the things they sent us. 'Tain't the rich people are sorriest for poor folks. This young Wallace—his father's the owner of a big paper, and rich besides, and he's got this boy in training for editor; and when that first duck couldn't do nothing out here, the old man said he'd buy in, and the young one thought it a mighty smart thing to do to come over here and turn a lot of half-starved women and children out in winter. What'shecare? What do any of these rich folks care?"
"I don't think you're fair, Wesley," said Robbins. "All the rich folks aren't mean. I know more about them than you." He spoke with a dawning of pride in his tone, which deepened a little.
"Yes, I know you used to belong to them," said Orr, "and I guess you were decent to the poor. But you'll admit you didn't have no notion how it cuts to work every muscle in you and to lay awake thinking yourself half crazy to puzzle out better ways to make money and yet to feel every year you're a-sinking deeper in the slough! I've worked five years here, and 'cepting the first year, every single year has piled interest on the mortgage. Every year we've had less clothes to wear and poorer stuff to eat, and it's been mend instead of buy, and we've had more debts and more worries every year. I tell you, Mr. Robbins, I thought it wouldkillme, once, to come on the county. I'd 'a' said I'd starve first; but you can't see your wife and children starve. I went in last winter, and asked for relief. I'd that old hound dog of mine with me; you knowed him. He'd been a good dog. He come with us when we come here, running under the wagon. All the children had played with him. I took him into town, and I asked every one I knowed would he have that dog for a gift; I showed off all his tricks, feeling like I was dirty mean deceiving him, for I done it so somebody would be willing to take him home and feed him and take care of him, for it's God's truth I hadn't enough for him and the children too. But nobody wanted him; he was pretty old, and he wasn't never handsome. And one store I was in, as I went out I heard a drummer that was trying to sell goods say, 'I saw that feller at the Relief, but I notice he's able to keep a dog. Lets the children go hungry ruther'n the dog, I guess.' I kinder turned on him, then I turned back again, and I whistled to Sport, and I looked at him and saw how his ribs showed and his eyes was kinder sunk. He wagged his tail and yelped like he used to, seeing me look at him; and then I went straight to that drug-store Billy used to keep—Billy Harvey. He moved away last year; he was a good friend of mine. I said to him, 'Billy, you got something that would kill a dog in a flash, so he'd never suffer or know what hurt him?' And Billy—he understood, and he said he had. 'You jest put it on his tongue and he'd never know what killed him.' Billy was sorry for me. He gave it to me for nothing, and he gave me some bones and corn bread and milk; so Sport had a good dinner. And he come right up to me and looked me in the eyes, wagging his tail. His eyes was kinder dim, but they was just as loving as ever. And he was wagging his tail when he dropped. Then I went home, and the children asked me where was Sport, and little Peggy cried—oh, Lord!"
"It was awful hard on you, Wesley," said Robbins gently.
"I suppose it wasn't nothing to what some men have suffered. There was poor Tommy Walker, give up his farm when it was foreclosed—thought he had to—and went off tramping to Kansas City, and after he'd tramped a week there, looking for a job, give it up and jumped into the river. And you know how old man Osgood killed himself, honest a old man as ever lived; always kept his machines under cover, too;hecouldn't stand it. They found it harder—and lots more, too; but I've found it hard enough. And I know I'd shoot that sneaking, sneering young Shylock, and not mind it near so much as I minded killing poor Sport."
"I don't know but we'd all better quit," said the younger man with a sigh. "This isn't a living country. Three years of drought would break any country up. It's not meant to live in. We had a fair crop this year, but it's so low; and freights, though they're lower, are pretty high. I don't see any way out of it. And I declare I think if we run this young fellow off we'll only get a bad name for the place."
"I don't care for bad names," said the other sullenly. "I got a wife and three children; I was foreclosed a year ago—so's you, so's a lot of the boys; we're at the end of our string now—legally. So what did we say? We said we didn't care, was it legal or illegal; that laws was made to skin the poor man; and we elected a sheriff we could depend on not to enforce the laws, and we druv off the bloodsuckers they sent out here. They say one feller was killed. I don't know. Guess that's one of Doc Russell's stories. The boys talk a lot about the cause of all this here trouble, and how we're going to have a revolution, and how referendum and initiendum will help, and how free silver will help—I guess, myself, a little more rain three years ago when corn was up would have helped more'n anything—and they talk how they're fighting the battles of the poor man, and the Eastern bloodsuckers has ruined us, and the Shylocks are devouring us, and they holler the roof off. I listen to 'em, but I don't believe 'em any more than you do."
"But," interrupted the other man eagerly, "I voted with the people's party—"
"Of course you did. We was going to be unanimous, and you dass'n't stand out; but you didn't believe in it. Me neither. I ain't makin' any pretense, but I'll tell you it's jest here—I'm down to bed-rock. If I let my farm be took away and my stock, what's going to become of my wife and children? You can call it stealing, or resisting the law, or anything you please, but I'll kill that feller before I'll let him turn me out."
"Don't you think we can scare him off? Killing's a nasty word."
"My father was with John Brown; he helped kill a man. He never lost no sleep about it; I shan't neither. Look here, Mr. Robbins, I got lots of time to think, winters—lots. Remorse and all them fine feelings you read of, they don't belong to folks that are way down in the dirt. You got to have something to eat and wear, and not have your stomach sassing you, and you half froze most of the time; when your body is in sech a fix it's keeping your mind so full there ain't any show for any other feelings. And look a' here, there's worse"—his voice sank. "Why, you git to that pass you ain't able to feel for your own wife and babies. When this morning Peggy kept hushing the baby, and she was fretting and moaning, and Peggy says to me, couldn't I git a little crackers in town; maybe the baby could eat them? I didn't feel nothing 'cept a numb aching. I kept saying, 'I'd 'a' felt that, once!' But I didn't feel it now. And, all of a sudden, it come to me 'twas because I was gittingpastfeeling—like you do when you're froze, jest before you die. I read a story once, when I was a little shaver, that kept me awake nights many a time. It was about a Russian nobleman out sleigh-riding with his children, three of 'em, on one of them steppes; and the wolves chased them. The father had a pistol, and he would shoot one of the wolves, and then the cowardly cusses would stop to tear the wounded critter to pieces and eat him, giving the folks in the sleigh a little more time; but every time the distance between the wolves and them when they stopped was a little smaller; but they were getting closer to the town, and they could see the lights. So the father, he kept on shooting, until the wolves were jumping up and grabbing at the sleigh, and the last time he shot a wolf he used up his last cartridge; then, when they come after him again, when the lights were nearer, and he knew if he could stop 'em once more he could escape, he—he throwed out one of the children; because it was this way: if he jumped out himself the children were so little they couldn't drive, and they'd be tipped up, and all three of them lost, so he throwed out the child he loved the best, and they got to town safely; but he went raving crazy. Well, I thought of him, and I said, if baby died there'd be the more chance for the others—"
"Look here, Wesley," his companion interrupted, "quit it! You're getting light-headed. Get rid of such fool thoughts as those or you'll be going off to the insane asylum; and mighty little use your family will have of youthere!"
Orr gave him no answer. Robbins watched his impassive face and frowned.
"He's not bad-hearted, but he's desperate. You can't appeal to a desperate man," he thought, "and the other boys are the same way. There'll be wild work there to-night, unless that young fool has the papers with him and will give them up. You're a fool, George Robbins, to mix yourself up in it on the chance of getting a few dollars from a Kansas City paper for a telegram!"
Silently the two men looked at the nearing lights, while the wagon creaked and swayed and rattled over the road.
"We got to save the lantern to go home by," Orr remarked at last, "else I'd light up; they ain't got any more lights in the streets. But I guess we can see."
There were enough lights in the windows to reveal the wide untidiness of the street, the black, boarded windows of the empty shops, the gaps in the sidewalk, the haggard gardens, where savage winds had blown the heart out of deserted rose-trees and geraniums. In general the sky-line was low and the roofs the simplest peaks; but it was broken in a few places by three and four storied brick buildings of the florid pomp on which a raw Western town loves to lavish its money. Now they loomed, dark and silent, landmarks of vanished ambition. Robbins, who was a man of parts and education, with a fanciful turn, felt the air of defeat and desolation hanging over the town choke him like miasma. To him the dreariness was the more poignant for the half a dozen little shops that still flickered their challenge to fate in the guise of a dim coal-oil lamp in the window. There appeared to be no customers at these dismal marts; in some cases not even the shop-keeper was visible, and only the stove in the rear of the room kept a lonesome red eye on the shelves. The sole sparks of life in the place were at the hotel. It had been built "during the boom"—a large rectangle of wood, with a cheap and gaudy piazza, all painted four shades of green, which the climate had burned and blistered and bleached into one sickly, mottled brown. Long ago the stables of the hostelry had been abandoned, but this night the stable yard was full of wagons.
The upper story of the hotel was dark, and the greater part of the lower story; but the kitchen was bright, and yellow light leaked through every chink and crack in the office blinds.
"Boys have turned out well, I guess," said Robbins.
"Theybetterturn out!" said Orr.
No word was spoken by either while they unhitched their horses, led them within the sheds, and tied them among the sorry company already housed. Robbins noted that after Orr had laid the blanket which had served them for robe on one thin back, he flung his own quilt over the other. Then they stumbled (for they were unwieldy with cold) through the yard to the hotel.
The office was full of men, gathered about the stove, talking to each other. The innkeeper sat behind his counter, affecting to busy himself with a blotted ledger. Originally he had been a stout man, but he had lost flesh of late years. He was wrinkled and flabby, and the furtive eyeshots that he cast toward the stove were anxious beyond his concealing. Any one, however, could perceive that matters of heavy import were being discussed. The miserably clad men about the stove all looked sullen. There was none of the easy-going badinage so habitual with Westerners. They exchanged glances rather than words; what words were spoken were uttered in low tones.
"Where is he?" said Orr, in the same undertone to a large man in a buffalo coat. The large man was the sheriff of the county. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the dining-room.
"What's he like?"
"Little feller with a game leg."
Orr frowned. Robbins felt uncomfortable. A gaunt man on the outskirts of the circle added: "He's powerful slick, though; you can bet your life. That girl Susy is all won over already; and she's suspecting something, sure's shooting. I guess she's warned him there's something in the air."
"Well, if there is, I don't know it," said the sheriff.
"You neverwillknow anything about it, either," a gray-haired man added.
"That's right, Kinney," two or three spoke at once. But immediately a silence fell on them. Robbins, who felt himself an outsider, could see that the others drew closer together. Once or twice he caught sinister murmurs. He began to wish that he had not come.
"It would be no earthly use for me to chip in and try to soften them," he thought. "They're crazy with defeat and misery and the fool stuff campaign orators have crammed down their throats."
Just then the dining-room door opened, and Robbins was the only one of the group to turn his head. The other men gazed at the fire, and the heavy silence grew heavier.
The man who came out of the room was young, slight of figure, and he limped a little. Nevertheless, there was nothing of dejection in his bearing or his face. He was freckled to a degree, smooth-shaven, and his teeth were beautiful. He had fine eyes also, a deep blue, flashing like steel as they moved from one object to another. The eyes were keen, alert, and determined; but being set rather wide apart under his light brows, they gave the face a candid, almost artless, look, and when he smiled the deep dimple in his cheek made it as merry as a child's.
"Good evening, gentlemen," said he cheerfully. No one responded. Robbins made a gurgle in his throat, which the newcomer generously accepted for salutation, promptly approaching the fire at Robbins' elbow.
"Cold weather," said he. Two or three of the company lifted their heads and eyed the speaker. Robbins wondered were they as keenly conscious as he of the young fellow's trimly fitted clothes, what good quality that rough plaided brown stuff was, how dainty was his linen. He looked at the home people's ragged coats, he thought of the poverty that he knew, and the reflection of a sneer was on his own lips, and, somehow, a lump in his throat.
"Too cold weather for folks to travel unless they're wanted bad!" said the gray-haired man on the edge of the company. There was a thrill of some strong feeling in his deep voice.
"It does seem that way," agreed the young man with undiminished vivacity. "I am glad to get to a shelter. By the way, I hear this is a dry town. Will some of you gentlemen have something with me?" He had pulled out a flask and was flashing his brilliant smile at Robbins.
"No, thank you, I don't drink," said Robbins; but he felt his throat itching at the sight.
"We'll drink your licker after we've finished our business with you," the gray man struck in. He was old Captain Sparks, who had been very bitter since his eldest son went crazy with overwork and sunstroke and killed himself. The other men laughed. They looked at each other; they looked with goading hate in their dull eyes at the stranger; and they laughed.
"Here, Johnny," said the young man, taking no notice, "run up to twenty-five and fetch me the bag there, the black one. If we are to drink to our business, I want you all to join. You are all interested, I take it? And get some glasses while you are about it."
The boy whom he addressed, the landlord's son, a lad of twelve, had been busy staring at the stranger ever since he entered the room. He ran away, but as he ran could not restrain himself from flinging one or two glances back over his shoulder.
"Don't you smoke, either?" said the stranger to Robbins, his hand to his breast pocket.
"Only a pipe," answered Robbins. He wished that he didn't feel an absurd, morbid sympathy for the poor fool's pluck sneaking into his consciousness.
"What are we waiting for?" The captain whispered it to a mild-eyed, short-bearded man next him; but the captain's whisper carried far. "Aw, give him rope!" suggested the mild-eyed man; "maybe he ain't so sandy's he seems."
Not seeming to recognize any chill in his reception, the young stranger approached the stove. No one moved to admit him to the inner circle; this, also, he did not seem to observe. "This whole country looks as if you had been having hard times," he continued. His voice had full, rich, magnetic notes, but its unfamiliar intonations jarred on his hearers; they knew them to belong to the East, and they hated the East. "It's pretty sad to ride through miles and miles of farming country and see the burned fence-posts that caught fire from the cinders, just lying where they fell, and the smoke not coming out of one farm-house chimney in six. It looks as if the farmers out this way had simply given up the fight."
"You've hit it," said the mild-eyed man; "they have. Some of them have moved away and some of them have killed themselves, after they've lost their stock on chattel mortgages and lost their land to the improvement company. There ought to be lots of ghosts on those abandoned farms and in those houses where the fences are down. This country is full of ghosts. We ain't much better than ghosts ourselves."
"It was the three dry years, I suppose."
"That and the mortgage sharks and the Shylocks from the East," old Captain Sparks interrupted in a venomous tone; "what pickings the drought left they got."
"Pretty rough!" said the stranger, declining the combat again. "There's one man I want to meet here; his name is Russell—Doctor Russell."
The mild-eyed man explained that his name was Russell; the other men looked puzzled and suspicious. "What's his little game?" whispered the captain. "It won't go, whatever it is," said the man next him. Robbins heard question and answer distinctly; but the young fellow near him did not wince. "Are you the one that wrote to Fairport, Doctor Russell? I guess you must be."
"Yes, I wrote to Fairport," said Russell.
"Well, I hope you liked the barrel we sent, and the boxes. They were going to send them to another place, but your letter decided us. That's my church, you know, which sent them. And, for that matter, it was your letter first turned my father's attention to investing in your part of the country. Oh, tell me, where did that tea go? My motherwouldsend her best London mixture—"
"Was it your mother?" Robbins spoke. With a red face and a flash of his eyes at the sullen group about him, he withdrew his chair, making a clear passage to the stove. "I'd like to thank her, then, and her son for her; that tea and that quince jam—whose was the quince jam?"
"I rather think my mother put that in, too."
"Well, it almost cured my wife; it was better than medicine, that and the tea, for, not to mention that we couldn't get any medicine, it put heart into her as medicine couldn't. I wonder was it your mother, or who was it put in that volume of college songs?Igot that. You wouldn't think it, but I'm a university man—Harvard—"
The young fellow caught his hand and gripped it hard. "Harvard? So am I—Martin Wallace, '92."
"My name is George Robbins, and I'm a good deal farther back; and, as you can see, I'm down on my luck. But there's no need going into my hard-luck story; it's like a lot of our stories here. You see where we are—hardly shoes to our feet; not because we have been shiftless or idle, or have wronged anybody; yet the cutthroats and thieves in the penitentiary have had better fare and suffered less with cold and hunger than we have. And it's not that we are fools, either; we're not uneducated. There are at least three other college men in our community; there's Doc Russell—"
"Iam," drawled Russell; "much good it's done me; but I won honors at the University of Iowa."
"I didn't win any honors, but I went to the State University—was graduated there before I went to Harvard. But—you aren't Teddy Russell, Teddy Russell of the Glee Club and the football eleven?"
"Yes, I am Teddy Russell."
"E. D. Russell, of course; why didn't I guess? You were there two years before me, but I daresay they are talking of you still; and the way you won a touchdown with a broken rib on you, and the time all the rest of the Glee Club missed the train at Fairport, going to Lone Tree, and you went on with the banjoes and were the whole thing for three-quarters of an hour! Well, I'm glad to meet you, Doctor. Let us have a good song or two together after business."
Russell unconsciously felt for the cravat which was not round his soiled and frayed collar; he buttoned his wreck of a frock coat. "Yes, we will," he began, but his voice stuck in his throat as the captain's rough grasp gripped his arm.
"I guess not," said the captain; "business first, young feller!"
Russell shook off the hand, muttering something too low for Robbins' ear; but Robbins sidled nearer to him, so near that he was able to exchange a single glance and to see Russell's lips form the words, "Watch Orr!" They understood each other.
"Weren't you from Ann Arbor yourself, Captain?" said Robbins, grabbing at any straw of peace.
"I've been too poor ever since the war to remember whether I ever had a college education or not," retorted the captain with a sneer. "I belong to the people now; their cause is my cause. Where doyoubelong? We've tended your folks when you were sick, and helped you lay by your crops, and driven the mortgage sharks off your stuff. Say, what are you doing now? Are you monkeying around to turn traitor or coward, or what's the matter?"
"We're all right, Captain," answered Russell, the western burr on his tongue as soft and leisurely as ever, and no hint of excitement in his manner; "but I see no harm in letting Mr. Wallace answer our questions before we fly off the handle." So saying, before the captain realized his purpose he edged through the crowd to Wallace's side. Robbins followed him; and the eyes of all the others turned to the three menacing and eager.
"All I ask is to answer questions and to make my proposition to you," said Wallace, his fearless young eyes running round the circle. "If you don't like it you can refuse and send me home—to make other arrangements."
"No, we ain't going to send you home," said Orr. It was the first time that he had spoken. Wallace flashed a keen glance at him and spoke his next words directly to him. "But I'm sure you won't want to do it. You see, I'm your last chance and youhaveto examine it!"
They had not expected such an answer. A little vibration ran like a wave over the gaunt, ferociously attentive faces. Wallace's eyes were fixed on Orr's face, which did not change. Orr's hand was in the breast of his ragged waistcoat.
"You people have certainly had the devil's own time and through no fault of yours, unless it's a fault that you aren't quitters!"
"That's right," said Robbins. Orr's eyes narrowed a little. Wallace continued, not taking his own eyes off the farmer's:
"This country is all right when there's a good year, but the good years come so seldom! What you fellows need down here is not free silver, but free water. With plenty of water you can raise big crops; and down in this valley there is not the danger, if we dig ditches, of the river running dry; we can get—"
"And who'll pay for irrigation?" a voice demanded. Wallace did not shift his gaze to the speaker; he talked to Orr as if Orr were the only man in the room: "We expect to furnish the money."
"And what will happen till the ditches are digged?"
"There's alfalfa to be raised on all these abandoned fields."
"And what's to become ofus?" said Orr. "I can see where you folks can git a holt and come out even; but what's going to become of us? Are we to move off the earth and let you stay here?"
Every one listened for Wallace's answer. Even the boy in the doorway, returning with Wallace's bag, stood half scared at the foot of the stairs, not daring to go forward.
"Why not stay and take pot luck with us?" said Wallace, coolly. "We bought the mortgages cheap, and we'll sell them cheap. We'll sell water rights cheap also. And you will make better colonists than any we could import—cheaper, too. It's for our interests as well as yours to make a deal with you and to make one that will be satisfactory. Isn't it?"
Orr's hand dropped to his side, he shuffled his feet, his eyes turned from Wallace to seek the captain. "I hadn't figured it out you was going to make any such proposition," said the captain.
"Perhaps you thought we intended to chuck you all out in the cold and hog everything. We are neither such pigs nor such fools. You fellows can help us more than anybody else. Here is Johnny. Now, let's come to business; but first, Johnny, get some glasses. We'll all drink to the new deal."
And afterwards they told with chuckles how even the captain, who was an original Prohibitionist before he became a Populist, touched his lips to the glass that was passed over the big map.
"All you folks here need ishope," said the cheerful young Iowan; "you have plenty of pluck and plenty of sense and oodles of experience; and we stand ready to put in the capital. Now, what do you say; does it go?"
After an hour of talk over the maps, he repeated the question, and the captain himself led the chorus, "It goes. We'll all stand by you!"
The blizzard had not come, and the moon was shining when George Robbins and Wesley Orr drove home from town. A basket was carefully held on Orr's knees. Robbins was caroling the chorus to "Johnny Harvard" and wishing a health to him and his true love at the top of a hoarse and husky voice. Orr looked solemnly ahead into the little wavering disk of radiance that their lantern cast. Once he shivered violently, but he was not cold. Suddenly he spoke. There was a quiver in his face and his voice, but all he said was: "Say, he was dead right. We was so desperate we was crazy. Hope, that was what we needed, and he give it to us; but how some fellers would have messed that job, getting round to that same proposal we all wanted to hug him for! And—I'm glad he didn't. I'm almighty glad we didn't git a chance to do what we set out to do. He was slick. Say, what is it they call them newspaper boys? Spellbinders? That's him—a first-class, A-number-one spellbinder!"
"I joined a woman's club in the Federation a little over two years ago," said Mrs. Hardy. "I didn't know what was the object then; and to tell you the truth, I am no wiser now."
"You know as much as I," was her neighbor's reply, politely given, the neighbor, however, feeling no real interest, at the moment, in anything outside the approaching election of president, and the gossip regarding a possible "dark horse" which was buzzing behind her, between some better informed members of the delegation.
The babble of mighty waters is like the noise that filled the theater. It surged from the plant-bedecked platform (where it might be likened to nothing more resonant than the hum of insects of a summer night) through the auditorium, to the dais under the balconies. The dais was noisy, always, not because its occupants were any more inclined to talk than other women, but because it was the rarest thing in the world for them to hear anyone either on the stage or the floor; and generally, they had to vote by their eyes, watching the advocates of their pet measures; and rising or sitting by their example; hence they solaced themselves with conversation.
At this moment, however, the quiet gentlewoman with the gavel, behind the long table, had not lifted her hand; and the upper part of the hall (which being in good hearing distance, was used to keep silence and criticise the talkers) was as busy with tongues and hands as its neighbors. So Mrs. Hardy, smiling a little at her neighbor's absent glance, listened until her thoughts wandered far afield. She only half caught the enthusiasm of the neighbor to her right, over an address on village improvement, or the indignation of the dames to the left, who were rehearsing the political baseness of Massachusetts. She was recalling a day thirty-three years ago. She did not see the secretary behind the table, whispering to the president; she did not notice a little group to the left near where the silk banner of Massachusetts fluttered, putting their heads together and gesticulating above their whispers. She forgot her surroundings and saw only a tall young man whose ardent eyes sank as they met her own, a handsome young fellow, who caught her hand in his, as they sat alone in the carriage, driving to the depot, and kissed the fingers and the wedding-ring, crying out he was not half good enough for her. "He was in love with me,then!" she thought. But now? Well, it was not to be expected a man with a great business and cares and money to think about and political affairs (for they were importuning Darius to go to the senate) should be paying romantic compliments to his middle-aged wife. Nevertheless, Darius had never forgotten their anniversary until last year. On her reminding him, he had whistled and laughed. "So it is," says he, "we ought to spend it together; it's a shame I have to go to Chicago; why don't you come with me?"
Smiling (yet a foolish something not merry was twitching at her nerves), she had declined. But she made a good excuse; Darius never guessed that she was so silly as to mind; and he brought her a sweet pigeon-blood ruby ring, set in diamonds, from Chicago; and he kissed her when he slipped it on her finger—kissed her cheek, not her hand. She wondered, at this minute, why she should wish that he had kissed the hand instead; an elderly woman ought to be content with a calm, assured, faithful affection, and let beautiful youngsters have the frills. That evening, she planned a dinner carefully to his liking, and she would not let herself be disappointed when he brought a political magnate, who talked politics, from the terrapin to the coffee. She smiled again, as she thought how much more of interest she would have found in the conversation, to-day, after the club's year on Our Colonial Policies. This last anniversary Darius had clean forgotten. In fact, he had advised her to go to the Federation meeting; saying, lightly, that it came at an opportune moment because he must be away that week, himself. "Milwaukee is a pretty city," he ended amiably, "and there will be lots of hen-functions and you'll enjoy yourself; but what's the object of it all, your Federation?"
"I don't know"—she astonished him with her frank levity—"when I do, I'll tell you."
"Well, don't get into any rows you can help," said he easily; "want any more money? Got plenty?"
"Plenty, thank you," said she, "although I am going to be rather extravagant and get some very smart toilets."
He looked over his glasses at her; and she was not able to decipher his smile. Didn't he approve of her clothes? She sent her fine eyes into the mirror of her dressing-table, after he had gone, and studied the picture there with a frown and a smile, at last with a moisture over her eyes.
But, although he said nothing, when she next examined her bank-book she found her credit larger. "Maybe hedoeslike my spending more money on my gowns," she thought.
She went to Milwaukee. She did not remind him of the anniversary. She said to herself that she would seriously try to discover the object of the Federation; then she would tell Darius. Her daughter-in-law accompanied her, and her daughter was to meet her. "Quite a family party," said her son; "well, I hope you girls will have a good lark! And, I say, Hester, find out what it's all about—if you can!"
At first, Myrtle Hardy was more bewildered than excited. The scene was unlike anything in her experience. The hotels glittering with feminine finery and humming with feminine voices; the placards over doorways in rotundas or corridors, announcing headquarters; the vast crooning bulk of the lake, the iridescent gleam of water that came to one in glimpses as one was whirled down the wide and breeze-swept avenues, amid a dazzle of lovely fabrics and smiling faces, blooming like flowers in swiftly passing victorias or rattling cabs, or rippling over the sidewalks into the wide vestibules where Milwaukee welcomed her guests; the noisy rush of the city; the ceaseless rattle and clang of the electric-cars which were like an orchestral accompaniment to the magnetic excitement pulsing under the decorous calm of the meetings, in the flower-decked theaters, or eddying through the foyer; these at first dazed the woman unused to clubs. But only for a brief time. Presently, she began to be consulted; her advice was asked; she made a speech in a meeting of the state delegation. There was, in the speech, her natural clear sense—which goes for something always and everywhere—there was, also, the mark in voice and speech and pose, of her years' training with the teachers. "I believe you could be heard all right, in the theater," said the president of the state delegation, afterward, "will you make a motion or two for us, this afternoon?" She made the motions; and, strangely enough, she wasn't so frightened as she had been in the state delegation; in fact, she proposed a simple short cut through an unnecessary dilemma with not much feeling beyond wonderment that so many clever women could get themselves into such a tangle. The applause and delight of her companions of the delegation touched her. "I'm in it, again," she thought, railing at her own vanity, but curiously pleased. Now, her thoughts were back, groping through the years when she was not "in it." Not the days of her youth, not at all; she had been the leader of her mates, an ingenious, tolerant, easy-going leader, admired and loved, shining among them by right of two years in an eastern boarding-school and a trip to Europe.
Not in her early married life, either; although, at first, Darius was poor and the great wagon manufactory was but a daring experiment. In those days she knew all her husband's hopes and plans as well as his troubles. He used to say, often, that she had a good business head. Those days they lived in a little brown wooden house with a five-foot piazza; and Darius mowed the tiny lawn himself; and she put up her own preserves and made all the children's clothes—pretty clothes they were, too; she was a housewife whose praise was in all the churches. But it does not follow that she had ceased to be a leader, far from it; she was the president of the "Ladies' Sewing Society" of her church; and of the first woman's club, classically named the "Clionian." She was a progressive spirit; she it was who introduced the regular motion into the business meetings; before her reign it having been the artless custom of the societies to talk until the discussion either languished or grew too violent, when some promoter of harmony would call out, "Let us put it to vote," whereupon there would be a few timid ayes and a self-respecting silence instead of no; and the measure would be adopted. Pertaining to this custom was an inevitable sequel of plaintive criticism from all the modest souls who "didn't like to speak," but who were full of foreboding wisdom. Myrtle Hardy was one of the few who could speak; and she was considered to speak very much to the point. Those days, she was keenly interested in all the life of a young, hopeful, bustling little western city. She belonged to a musical society and would rise at five in the morning to practice, and she was one of an anxious band of women who had bought a library and were running an amateur entertainment bureau to support it. Then, Darrie was in home-made knickerbockers; Myrtie was a sweet, little, loving hoyden who was her mother's despair because she would climb trees in her white frocks; Ralph was a baby, and the two little girls that died were their mother's tiny helpers, with the willingest little hands and feet. Sitting there in the crowded and noisy theater, a quiver ran over the mother's face. Her friends had forgotten, the brothers and sisters had forgotten, even Darius seemed to forget; but, day and night, she remembered the eager little faces, lighting so happily at her praise, the shining little heads that used to nestle against her heart. The two died of scarlet fever in one terrible week. In that week, the first gray threads had crept into Myrtle Hardy's beautiful brown hair. She was nurse and comforter and helper, then, to Darius. She felt her eyes cloud with the vision of him, as he flung himself on the babies' little bed, sobbing in the terrible, racking passion of a man's grief. "Not now, dear, not now, not till the others are safe," she had whispered; "we have them still; they need us."
She wondered was it after the babies went that she began to drop out of things. Somehow she was so busy comforting Darius and nursing the others back to health, and crowding back her own ceaseless grief out of sight; and thinking of cheerful things to say and new interests for the others, that the library passed out of corporate existence and into endowed rest with hardly a thought from her. Nearly at the same time, the musical society perished in a cataclysm, due to the sensitive musical temperament, and the literary society died of inanition, after browsing through literature from Milton to Dante; and after each member had written one or two papers, thus sating the natural curiosity of the other members. Myrtle did not lift a hand to save either of the societies. She heard the wrathful accusations of the musical warriors, and put in the unappreciated word for peace, but did not resent its failure. She consoled the literary mourners with the reflection that they could read up about things in the magazines or the books of the new library; and masked her secret listlessness with perfunctory regret. Long after, she came to wonder whether it was not she who went into prison, then; rather than the world that left her on one side. Did she not gently but rigidly exclude the friends who would have called upon her and shut herself apart with her own? Continually, she used to pray for cheerfuless, for patience; but it never occurred to her to pray for interest. When other societies were formed, she did not care to join them; she followed her own advice and read apart by herself. By and by, although so much more of a personage, she was no longer beset with invitations. The younger women organized a new club with new methods; and Myrtle Hardy read her books, peacefully, on her wide piazzas, amid her plants and flowers. When Myrtie came back from college, Darius asked her wasn't she going to help Myrtie by joining the club with her?
"Dear, no," said she, blithely, "they are all so young."
"Why don't you get up a club of your own, then, and take in the other left outs?" said he.
"I don't fancy women's clubs much; you know I did belong to them; they are half-baked things, and they take their own improvement with such deadly seriousness. And it is such a smattering that you get in them. A smattering is always forgotten; unless you know a lot about a thing you forget it all."
"Oh, well, you know best what you like," said Darius, easily; "I only thought you seemed a little dull." He dropped the subject; but she repeated his words, often to herself; he never had thought her dull, before. She noticed that Myrtie did not talk of her club. She was puzzled. Outwardly, Myrtie was a handsome young woman with a highbred repose of manner which she had acquired as a college editor and the protector of new girls; inwardly, she was still shy, desperately in dread of awkwardness, and brimming with enthusiasms. Not until she was about to be married did her mother find a trace of her little girl in this gently haughty young creature. And, then, there remained only Myrtie's last photographs and Myrtie's empty chamber, and the weekly letters for her mother's hungry heart. "I am not sure I know her," she would often muse, those days, "I am only sure she doesn't know me!"
Myrtie lived in Chicago; she had married very well indeed; and had a prosperous husband who was a graduate of Harvard and dallied with reform; and there were two sweet little children who called Mrs. Hardy "Granny"; and Myrtie always consulted her mother when they were ill; she was a devoted daughter. "When my dear mother was alive," said Mrs. Hardy, smiling rather grimly, "grannies were not very nice old cronies who smoked pipes in the chimney corner; and 'Grandma' was good enough for any grandmother; now, 'Grandma' is provincial andIam a granny, myself. It is a little puzzling."
The children were all out of the house, now. Ralph, the youngest, was at college; she was well acquainted with him; she used to write him about the books she read and he wrote her about the boys and football; she knew a great deal about football. She lived in a stately new colonial house with quaint little window-panes wherever they would not obstruct the view, and snowy tiled bath-rooms, such as no colonial ever knew; and terraces decked with pink and blue hydrangeas; and dazzling window gardens. Myrtie had been as kind as possible about the house; and Myrtie's taste was charming; it had been an education in colonial history as well as architecture to have Myrtie help build the house; even the architect was deferential to her. Across the street was Darrie's less costly but no less correctly charming house. Hester had done Myrtie's architectural bidding, also. Darrie was the best of sons. She was proud of him; and his father depended more and more on him. She loved his wife; and his children were her vivid delight. Darrie used to fetch her flowers and new plants for the window gardens; and tell her about the children's funny sayings. Darius, her husband, grew kinder and more generous all the time; he gave her a check-book of her own; she told her old friends that she had the best husband and children in the world; and that she was a grateful woman; she duly remembered her abundant mercies in her prayers; and yet—and yet she began to feel herself retired. A most respectable position, that of a retired officer; but, somehow, generals and admirals do not covet it. Nor did Myrtle Hardy. She had been in the center of her own stage; now she felt herself most gently, most civilly, pushed into the wings. Her daughter-in-law, with all her admiration and her dutiful respect, had interests which she never discussed; had a point of view and ideals which were outside her comprehension. She felt fatigued and puzzled when she heard the younger generation's familiar speech with itself. "I am not in it," she said to herself. Darius, too, no longer consulted her; the old fashion of confidence had somehow slipped away; he had not very much to say when they were alone; and he was beginning to call her "Mother." Myrtle Hardy considered. She thought for weeks and thought hard. She sat in her sewing-room, up-stairs, where were the only two rocking-chairs that Myrtie's impeccable taste had allowed to abide in the house. She sat first in one and then in the other of the chairs, her needlework unheeded in her lap; and watched her little grandson and his sister playing while the nurse made an interminable German lace on the back porch; and just across from her window, Hester, her daughter-in-law, sat amid a heap of books, reading and making notes. "That child has been studying for three months, every spare moment, on her paper about 'Scientific Plumbing in the Modern Mansion.'" Mrs. Hardy muttered, with a frown, "well, I hope she will know something, if she keeps her mind! That was not the way we prepared club papers in my day; we decided on our subjects one meeting and we read our essays on them the next; and two weeks was enough for us; now, they spend a half year making a programme and have it hanging over them a year in advance." She watched her daughter-in-law, smiling grimly; then, suddenly, she rose, with the motion of one who has come to a decision. "At least they are not superficial, nowadays," she said, "and perhaps it is better to take one's self too seriously than not seriously enough. And after all, Hester did find out what was the matter with the laundry faucets."
One day she told her daughter-in-law that she wanted to join a class in parliamentary law.
"But we haven't any," objected Mrs. Darius Hardy, Jr., meekly.
"Then get up one," said the one time president of clubs. "Get all you can to join a class, send for a teacher, and I will make up the deficit, in the subscription list."
A parliamentary teacher of renown came. She was also a teacher of expression—that was her poetical word. Hester caught her breath the first time her mother-in-law rose in the class to "speak to the motion." She embraced her with beaming eyes and the prettiest rose of delight on her cheeks. "Oh, how did you learn it?" she sighed, happily, "you are the best of us all!"
"I took some private lessons in Chicago," said Mrs. Hardy—her quiet manner did not betray an unexpected thrill.
"You'rebeautiful!" cried Hester.
After that, Hester always seconded her mother-in-law's motions; and fought in the mimic debates as valiantly on her side as a natural reticence would let her. It was odd (to Mrs. Hardy) what a different relation grew up between them; a sense of comradeship and the pleasures of partisanship, wherein it is not only the leader who exults in the winning fray, the follower has a simpler and a nobler joy. The first natural consequence of Hester's admiration was that she begged her mother-in-law to join her club. Before the end of the year, Mrs. Hardy was elected president of the club; before the end of the next year, she was burrowing in books and magazines, as absorbed as Hester, in the conduct of Great Britain to her colonies. She found herself suddenly interested in the newspapers; Darrie talked politics with her; and they were no longer unintelligible.
"Whew, isn't mother getting cultivated!" Darius whispered to his boy; and they both grinned.
"She's growing handsomer, too," said Darius the younger.
"I hope she won't go to any of those fakirs in the newspapers who paint you all over, so's you crack when you laugh," commented Darius, anxiously, "and, say, Darrie, there's a way they have, nowadays, of burning off your skin and giving you a new skin—they call it being 'done over'; it must be frightful torture—I'm not going to have your mother's face sizzled up, that fashion."
"She doesn't need it; mother's skin is lovely," said the loyal son.
"Her not needing it is no reason why she won't want it—being a woman—Darrie. Your mother is the most sensible woman in the world, Darrie; but she's a woman. And I'm not sure whether a woman ought to monkey with her age, the way mother is doing. What do you suppose I saw with my own eyes, yesterday? There was mother, swinging her arms over her head and bowing like a heathen Chinee, until her slender fingers touched the floor; and then she went to kicking over the chairs—high kicks!"
"Oh, that's only Delsarte—they only do that to limber up and make themselves graceful. Hetty can kick the chandelier."
Myrtle caught echoes of this conversation; and was base enough to listen behind her sewing-room curtains, giving no sign. It was true that a change had come over her, and that her mirror reflected smarter toilets, a different carriage, and a fresher charm. For one reason, she looked younger because she was much more cheerful. "I am a child with a new toy," she would say to herself. But there is no question that she found a pungent enjoyment in her new activity. One of the perpetual wonders of life is how small a figure the stake cuts in the game. It is infinitely more exciting to make money, for example, than to have it. To keep our souls in repair they need exercise; and the vicissitudes, the emotions, the excitement of a career, happily do not depend on the size of the stage. The great stake, the large stage, count; but they count less than their claims. What comes to more than the pomp of success (as the vulgar name an intangible thing) is the elation of using all one's powers; nor is there any tawdry applause comparable to the rich and fine content of accomplishment. But often Myrtle caught Darius's pondering eyes and wondered to herself what he was thinking. Really, Darius was experiencing the rather piquant emotions of a man who discovers an entirely new creature in his own wife. By a natural transition his thoughts went back to the days when he was courting Myrtle Danforth, and "couldn't make her out;" by an equally natural process of selection, he fumbled through dim passages in his soul, striving to see the relation between this assured and graceful woman of affairs and the joyous young beauty that he had won, the high-hearted comrade of his poverty and struggles, the tender comforter of his sorrows. A hundred little trivial, affecting incidents rose out of the hazy years to gripe his heart. He felt a novel shyness, however; and the only token of his feelings (outside the check-book) was a habit he had fallen into of watching his wife when she was not looking.