CHAPTER XXI

LITTLE ARCADY IS GRIEVOUSLY SHAKEN

Mrs. Potts had written. I had Solon's word for it; but that which followed the writing will not cease within this generation or the next to be an affair of the most baffling mystery to our town folk. Me, also, it amazed; though my emotion was chiefly concerned with those gracious effects which the gods continued to manage from that apparently meaningless sojourn of J. Rodney Potts among us.

Superficially it was a thing of utter fortuity. Actually it was a masterpiece of cunning calculation, a thing which clear-visioned persons might see to bristle with intention on every side.

Years after that innocent encounter between an adventurous negro and an amiable human derelict in the streets of a far city,—those two atoms shaken into contact while the gods affected to be engaged with weightier matters,—the cultured widow of that derelict recalled the name of a gentleman in the East who was accustomed to buy tall clocks and fiddle-backed chairs, in her native New England, paying prices therefor to make one, in that conservative locality, rich beyond the dreams of avarice, almost.

Such was the cleverly devised circumstance that now intervened between my neighbor and an indigence distressing to think about. It was as if, in the game, a red four which one had neglected to "play up" should actually permit victory after an intricate series of disasters, by providing a temporary resting-place for a black trey, otherwise fatally obstructive, causing the player to marvel afresh at that last fateful but apparently chance shuffle.

A week after Mrs. Potts had written, the gentleman who received her letter registered as "Hyman Cohen, New York, N.Y.," at the City Hotel. From his manner of speech when he inquired for the Lansdale home it was seen that he seemed to be a German.

When Miss Caroline received him a little later, he asked abruptly about furniture, and she, in some astonishment, showed him what she had, even to that crowded into dark rooms and out of use.

He examined it carelessly and remarked that it was the worst lot that he had ever seen.

This did not surprise Miss Caroline in the least, though she thought the gentleman's candor exceptional. Little Arcady's opinion, which she knew to tally with his, had always come to her more circuitously.

The strange gentleman then asked Miss Caroline, not too urbanely, if she had expected him to come all the way from New York to look at such cheap stuff. Miss Caroline assured him quite honestly that she had expected nothing of the sort, and intimated that her regret for his coming surpassed his own, even if it must remain more obscurely worded. She indicated that the interview was at an end.

The strange gentleman arose also, but as Clem was about to close the door after him, he offered Miss Caroline one hundred and fifty dollars for "the lot," observing again that it was worthless stuff, but that in "this business" a man had to take chances. Miss Caroline declined to notice this, having found that there was something in the gentleman's manner which she did not like, and he went down the path revealing annoyance in the shrug of his shoulders and the sidewise tilt of his head.

To Mrs. Lansdale's unaffected regret, and amazement as well, the gentleman returned the following morning to say that he was about to leave for New York, but that he would actually pay one hundred and seventy-eight dollars for the stuff. This was at least twenty-two dollars more than it could possibly be worth, but the gentleman had an unfortunate passion for such things. Miss Caroline bowed, and called Clem as she left the room.

The gentleman returned the morning of the third day to close the deal. He said he had missed his train on the previous day, and being a superstitious man he regarded that as an augury of evil. Nevertheless he had resolved to take the stuff even at a price that was ruinous. He unfolded two hundred dollars in the presence of Clem, and wished to know if he might send a wagon at once. Clem brought back word from Miss Caroline, who had declined to appear, that the strange gentleman would oblige her by ceasing his remarkable intrusions. Whereupon the gentleman had said: "Oh, verywell! Then I go!"

But he went no farther than the City Hotel; and here one may note a further contrivance of indirection on the part of our attending Fates.

From the evening train of that day the 'bus brought another strange gentleman, of an Eastern manner, but somewhat neater of dress than the first one and speaking with an accent much less obtrusive. This gentleman wrote "James Walsingham Price, N.Y.," on the register, called for a room with a bath, ordered "coffee and rolls" to be sent there at eight-thirty the next morning, and then asked to see the "dinner card."

After mine host, Jake Kilburn, had been made to understand what "dinner card" meant, he made Mr. James Walsingham Price understand that there was no dinner card. This being clear at last, the newcomer said: "Oh,verywell! Then just give my order to the head-waiter, will you—there's a good chap—a cup of consommé, a bit of fish, a bird of some sort, broiled, I fancy,—er—potatoesau gratin, a green salad of some kind,—serve that with the bird,—a piece of Camembert, if it's in good condition, anyentremetyou have and ademi-tasse. I'll mix the salad dressing myself, tell him,—oh, yes—and a pint of Chambertin if you've something you can recommend."

Billy Durgin, scrutinizing the newcomer in a professional way, told me afterwards that Jake Kilburn "batted his eyes" during this strange speech and replied to it, "like a man coming to"—"supper in twenty minutes," after which he pounded a bell furiously and then himself showed his new and puzzling guest to a room—but not a room "with a bath," be it understood, for a most excellent reason.

Billy Durgin was excited half an hour later by noting the behavior of the first strange gentleman from the East as his eyes fell upon this second. He threw both hands into the air, where they engaged in rapid horizontal shakings from his pliant wrists, and in hushed gutturals exclaimed, "My God, my God!" in his own fashion of speech, which was reproduced admirably for me by my informant. Billy was thus confirmed in his earlier belief that the first strange gentleman was a house-breaker badly wanted somewhere, and he now surmised that the newcomer must be a detective on his trail. But a close watch on their meeting, a little later in the evening, seemed to contradict this engaging hypothesis. The second stranger emerged from the dining room, where he had been served with supper, and as he shut the door of that banqueting hall, Billy, standing by, heard him, too, call upon his Maker. He called only once, but it was in a voice so full of feeling as to make Billy suspect that he was remembering something unpleasant.

At this point the newcomer had glanced up to behold the first strange gentleman, and Billy held his breath, expecting to witness a sensational capture. To his unspeakable disgust the supposed sleuth grinned affably at his supposed quarry and said: "Ah, Hyman! Is the stuff any good?"

"How did you find it out?" asked the first strange gentleman.

The other smiled winningly. "Why, I dropped into your place the other day, and that beautiful daughter-in-law of yours mentioned incidentally where you'd gone and what for. She's a good soul, Hyman, bright, and as chatty as she can be."

"Ach! That Malke! She goes back right off to De Lancey Street, where she belongs," said the first stranger, plainly irritated.

"How did you find the stuff, Hyman?"

"Have you et your supper yet?"

"Yes—'tisn't Kosher, is it? How did you find the stuff?"

"No, it ain't Kosher—nothing ain't Kosher!"

"It's a devilish sight worse, though. How did you find the stuff, Hyman?"

The one called Hyman here seemed to despair of putting off this query.

"No good! No good!—not a decent piece in the lot! I pledge you my word as a gentleman I wouldn't pay the freight on it to Fourth Avenue!" Billy remarked that the gentleman said "pletch" for pledge and "afanoo" for avenue.

The second stranger, hearing this, at once became strangely cheerful and insisted upon shaking hands with the first one.

"Fine, Hyman, fine! I'm delighted to hear you say so. Your words lift a load of doubt from my mind. It came to me in there just now that I might be incurring that supper for nothing but my sins!"

"Have your choke," said Hyman, a little bitterly.

"I have, Hyman, I have had my 'choke'!" said James Walsingham Price, with a glance of disrelish toward the dining room.

It seemed clear to Billy Durgin, who reported this interview to me in a manner of able realism, that these men were both crooks of the first water.

Billy at once polished his star and cleaned and oiled his new 32-caliber "bull-dog." The promise of work ahead for the right man loomed more brightly than ever before in his exciting career.

While I discussed with Miss Caroline, that evening, the unpleasant mystery of her late caller, there came a note from him by messenger. He offered six hundred and twenty-one dollars for her furniture, the sum being written in large letters, so that it had the effect of being shouted from the page. He further expressed a wish to close the deal within the half hour, as he must leave town on the night train.

Had Miss Caroline been alone, she might have fallen. Even I was staggered, but not beyond recovery. The messenger bore back, at my suggestion, a refusal of the offer and a further refusal to consider any more offers that evening. There was indicated a need for calm daylight consideration, and a face-to-face meeting with this variable Mr. Cohen.

"But he leaves on the night train," said Miss Caroline. "It may be our last chance, and six hundred dollars is—"

"He only says he leaves," I responded. "And for three days, at least, Mr. Cohen seems to have been grossly misinformed about his own movements. Perhaps he's deceived himself again."

At eight o'clock the following morning Clem served my breakfast for the first time since his illness, and I approached it with thanksgiving for his recovery.

A knock at the door took him from me just as he had poured the first cup of real coffee I had seen for nearly three months. He came back with the card of one James Walsingham Price, whom I did not know; whereas I did know the coffee.

"Fetch him here," I said. "He can't expect me to leave this coffee, whoever he is."

Into my dining room was then ushered a tall, smartly dressed, smooth-faced man of perhaps middle age, with yellowish hair compactly plastered to his head. He became, I thought, suddenly alert as he crossed my threshold. I arose to greet him.

"This is—" I had to glance at the card.

"Yes—and you're Major Blake? I regret to disturb you, Major,"—here his glance rested blankly upon the rich golden-brown surface of Clem's omelette, and it seemed to me that the thread of his intention was broken for an instant by a fit of absentmindedness. He resumed his speech only after an appreciable pause, as if the omelette had reminded him of something.

"The hour is untimely, but I'm told that you're a friend of a Mrs. Lansdale, who has some pieces of Colonial furniture she wishes to let go. I wondered, you know, if you'd be good enough to introduce me. I rather thought some such formality might be advisable—I understand that a shark named Cohen has already approached her."

Even as he spoke I recalled that Mr. Cohen's face, in profile, might provoke the vision of a shark to a person of lively imagination.

"I shall be glad," I said, "to present you to Mrs. Lansdale."

Again had my caller's glance trailed across the breakfast table, where the omelette, the muffins, and the coffee-urn waited. The glance was politely unnoting, but in it there yet lurked, far back, the unmistakable quality of a caress. In an instant I remembered, and, with a pang of sympathy, I became his hungered brother.

"By the way, Mr. Price, are you staying at the City Hotel?"

"The man said it was the only place, you know."

"You had breakfast there this morning?" He bowed his assent eloquently, I thought.

"Then by all means sit down and have breakfast."

"Oh,really, no—bynomeans—I assure you I'd a capital breakfast—"

"Clem!"

Clem placed a chair, into which Mr. Price dropped without loss of time, though protesting with polished vehemence against the imposition.

His eyes shone, nevertheless, as Clem set a cup of coffee at his elbow and brought a plate.

"May I ask when you arrived?" I questioned.

"Only last evening."

"Then you dined at the City Hotel?"

"Major Blake, I will be honest with you—Idid!"

"Clem, another omelette, quick—but first fetch some oranges, then put on a lot more of that Virginia ham and mix up some waffles, too. Hurry along!"

"Really, you are very good, Major."

"Not that," I answered modestly; "I've merely eaten at the City Hotel." But I doubt if he heard, for he lovingly inhaled the aroma of his coffee with half-shut eyes.

"I am delighted to have met you," he said. "If ever you come to New York—" He tore himself from the omelette long enough to scribble the name of a club on the card by my plate.

"I rarely crave more than coffee and a roll in the morning," he continued, after the second omelette, the ham, the waffles, and more coffee had been consumed. "I fancy it's your bracing air."

I fancied it was only the City Hotel, but I did not revert to that.

When at last Mr. Price lighted a cigar which I had procured at an immense distance from Slocum County, he spoke of furniture, also of Cohen.

Beheld through the romantic mist of after-breakfast, Cohen was, perhaps, not wholly a shark; at least not more than any dealer in old furniture. Really, they were almost forced to be sharks. It was not in the nature of the business that they should lead honest lives. Mere collectors—of which class my guest was—were bad enough. Still, if you could catch a collector in one of his human moments—

He blew forth the smoke of my cigar with a relish so poignant that I suspected he had already tried one of Jake Kilburn's best, the kind concerning which Jake feels it considerate to warn purchasers that they are "five cents, straight" andnotsix for a quarter. I saw that if the collector before me were subject to human moments, he must be suffering one now. So, while he smoked, I told him freely of Miss Caroline, of her furniture and her plight.

He commended the tale.

"One of the best I ever heard," he declared. "Only, if you'll pardon me, it sounds too good to be true. It sounds, indeed, like a 'plant,'—fine old Southern family, impoverished by war—faithful body-servant—old Colonial mansion despoiled of its heirlooms—rare opportunities for the collector. Really, Major, you should see some of the stuff that was landed on me when I began, years ago, with a story almost as good. Reproductions, every piece of it, with as fine an imitation of worm-eaten backs as you could ever wish to see."

I had never wished to see any worm-eaten backs whatever, but I sought to betray regret that I had not encountered this surpassing lot of them.

"Of course," he continued, "you will understand that I am speaking now as a hardened collector, whose life is beset with pitfalls and with gins—not as a starved wretch to the saver of his life."

"You shall see the stuff," I said.

"Oh, by all means, and the quicker the better. Cohen is waiting at the hotel for me now—at the foot of the front stairway, and he may suspect any minute that I was mean enough to slink down the back stairs and out through an alley. In fact, I'm rather excited at the prospect of seeing that furniture—Cohen condemned it so bitterly."

"He sent an offer of six hundred dollars for it last night," I said. Hereupon my guest became truly excited.

"Hedid—six hundred—Cohendid? I don't wish to be rude, old chap, but would you mind hastening? That is more eloquent than all your story."

For half an hour, notwithstanding his eagerness, Mr. James Walsingham Price succumbed to the manner of Miss Caroline. Noting the lack of compunction with which she played upon him before my very eyes, I divined that the late Colonel Lansdale had not found the need of pistols entirely done away with even by the sacrament of marriage.

Not until Clem announced "Mr. Cohen" did the self-confessed collector cease to be a man.

"Not at home," said Miss Caroline, crisply. Price grinned with appreciation and fell to examining the furniture in strange ways.

It was a busy day for him, but I could see that he found it enjoyable, and strangely was it borne in upon me that Miss Caroline's ancient stuff was in some sense desirable.

More than once did Price permit some sign of emotion to be read in his face—as when the sixth chair of a certain set was at last found supporting a water-pail in the kitchen. The house was not large, but it was crowded, and Price was frankly surprised at the number of things it held.

At six o'clock he went to dine with me, Miss Caroline having told him that I was authorized to act for her on any proposal he might have to make.

"You have saved me again," he said warmly, in the midst of Clem's dinner. "I assure you, Major, that hotel is infamous. I'm surprised, you know, that something isn't done about it by the authorities."

I had to confess that the City Hotel was very highly regarded by most of our citizens.

Again, after a brief interval of stupefaction, did James Walsingham Price call upon his Maker. "And yet," he murmured, "we are spending millions annually to impose mere theology upon savages far less benighted. Think for a moment what a tithe of that money would do for these poor people. Take the matter of green salads alone—to say nothing of soups—don't you have so simple a thing as lettuce here?"

"We do," I said, "but it's regarded as a trifle. They put vinegar and sugar on it and cut it up with their knives."

My guest shuddered.

"I dare say it's hopeless, but I shall always be glad to remember thatyouexist away from your City Hotel."

Thus did we reach the coffee and some cognac which the late L.Q. Peavey had gifted me with by the hands of his estimable kinswoman.

"And now to business," said my guest. His whimsical gray eyes had become studious and detached from our surroundings. He had a generous mouth, which he seemed habitually to sew up in a close-drawn seam, but this would suddenly and pleasantly rip in moments of forgetfulness. Being the collector at this moment, the mouth was tightly stitched.

"Let me begin this way," he said. "There are exactly six pieces in that house that will prevent my being honest so long as they are not mine. I am not unmindful of your succor, Major. I'll prove that to you if you look me up in town,—send me a wire and a room shall be waiting for you,—and I am enraptured by that small and lively brown lady. Nevertheless I shall remain a collector and, humanly speaking, an ingrate, a wolf, a caitiff, until those six articles are mine. Make them mine, and for the remainder of that stuff you shall have the benefit of an experience that has been of incredible cost. Accept my figure, and I promise you as man to man to de-Cohenize myself utterly."

"They are yours," I said—"what are they and what is the figure? Clem—Mr. Price's glass."

"There—you disarm me. One bit of haggling or hesitation might have hardened me even now; the serpent within me would have lifted its head and struck. But you have saved yourself—and very well for that! The articles are those six ball-and-claw-foot chairs with violin backs. I will pay fifty dollars apiece for those. Remember—it is the voice of Cohen. The chairs are worth more—some day they'll fetch twice that; but, really, I must throw a sop to that collector-Cerberus within me. He's entitled to something. He had the wit to fetch me here."

"The chairs are yours," I said, wondering if I had not mistaken his offer, but determining not to betray this.

"A little memorandum of sale, if you please—and I'll give you my check. That larger sideboard would also have stood in the way, but those glass handles aren't the originals."

The formality was soon despatched, and my curious friend became truly human.

"Now, Blake, this is from the grateful wretch whose life you have not only saved but enriched. Well, there's an excellent lot of stuff there. I've got the pick, from a collector's standpoint—though not from a money valuation. I can't tell what it will bring, but enough to put our youngish old friend easy for some time to come. You box it up, as much as she wants to let go, and send it to the Empire Auction Rooms—here's the card. They're plain auction-room people, you understand,—wouldn't hesitate to rob you in a genteel, auction way,—but I'll be there and see that they don't. Some of those other pieces I may want, but I'll take a bidding chance on them like a man, and I'll watch the whole thing through and see that it's straight."

Billy Durgin told me that Cohen and James Walsingham Price left on the night train going East. Billy noticed that Cohen seemed morose, and heard him exclaim something that sounded like "Goniff!" under his breath, as Price turned away from him after a brief chat.

For Little Arcady the appalling wonder was still to dawn. Load after load of the despised furniture went into freight-cars, until the home of Miss Caroline was only comfortably furnished. This was sensational enough—that the things should be thought worth shipping about the country with freights so high.

But after a few weeks came tales that atrophied belief—tales corroborated by a printed catalogue and by certain deposits of money in our bank to the account of Miss Caroline. That six wretched chairs, plain to ugliness, had sold for three hundred dollars spread consternation. The plain old sideboard for a hundred and ten dollars only fed the flames. But there had been sold what the catalogue described as "A Colonial sofa with carved dolphin arms, winged claw feet, and carved back" for two hundred and ten dollars, and after that the emotions aroused in Little Arcady were difficult to classify. Upon that very sofa most of the ladies of Little Arcady had sat to pity Miss Caroline for being "lumbered" with it. Again, a "Colonial highboy, hooded," recalled as an especially awkward thing, and "five mahogany side chairs" had gone for three hundred and eighty dollars. A "Heppelwhite mahogany armchair," remembered for its faded red satin, had veritably brought one hundred and sixty dollars; and a carved rosewood screen, said to be of Empire design, but a shabby thing, had sold astonishingly for ninety dollars. A "Hogarth chair-back settee" for two hundred and ten dollars, and "four Hogarth side chairs" for three hundred and fifteen dollars only darkened our visions still further. Some of us had known that Hogarth was an artist, but not that he had found time from his drawing to make furniture. Of Heppelwhite we had heard not at all, although twelve arm-chairs said to be his had been by some one thought to be worth around seven hundred dollars. Nor of any Sheraton did we know, though one of his sideboards and a "pair of Sheraton knife urns" fetched the incredible sum of five hundred and fifty dollars. Chippendale was another name unfamiliar in Slocum County, but Chippendale, it seemed, had once made a wing book-case which was now worth two hundred and forty dollars of some enthusiast's money. After that a Chippendale settee for a hundred and forty dollars and an "Empire table with 1830 base" for ninety-three dollars seemed the merest trifles of this insane outbreak.

The amount netted by the late owner of these things was reported with various exaggerations, which I never saw any good reason to correct. As I have said, the thing was, and promises to remain forever in Little Arcady, a phenomenon to be explained by no known natural laws. For a long time our ladies were too aghast even to marvel at it intelligibly. When Aunt Delia McCormick in my hearing said, "Well, now, what a world this is!" and Mrs. Westley Keyts answered, "That's verytrue!" I knew they referred to the Lansdale furniture. It was typical of the prevailing stupefaction.

"It seems that a collectormaybe a gentleman," said Miss Caroline, "but Mr. Cohen wasn't even a collector!"

Then I told her the considerable sum now to her credit. She drew a long breath and said, "Now!" and Clem, who stood by, almost cried, "Now, Little Miss!"

THE BOOK OF LITTLE MISS.

"THE BOOK OF LITTLE MISS."

THE TIME OF DREAMS

I had Clem to myself for a time. Little Miss, it seemed, was not yet rugged enough for travel into the far Little Country. Nor was she at once to be convinced that she might safely leave her work. I suspect that she had found cause in the past to rank her mother with Clem as a weigher and disburser of moneys. I noticed that she chose to accept Miss Caroline's earliest letters about their good fortune with a sort of half-tolerant attention, as an elder listens to the wonder-tales of an imaginative child, or as I had long listened to Clem's own dreamy-eyed recital of the profits already his from "brillions" of chickens not yet come even to the egg-stage of their careers.

Not until Miss Caroline had ceased from large and beauteous phrases about "the great good fortune that has befallen us in the strangest manner"—not until she descended to actual, dumfounding figures with powerful little dollar-marks back of them, did her daughter seem to permit herself the sweet alarms of hope. Even in that moment she did not forget that she knew her own mother, for she took the precaution to elicit a confirmatory letter from her mother's attorney, under guise of thanking him for the friendly interest he had "ever manifested" in the welfare of the Lansdales.

It occurred to me that Little Miss had been endowed, either by nature or experience, with a marked distrust of mere seemings. The impression conveyed to me by her unenthusiastic though skilfully polite letter was of one who had formed the habit of doubting beyond her years. These I judged to be twenty-eight or thereabouts, while her powers of restraint under provocation to believe savored of more years than even her mother could claim. I had myself been compelled to note the value of negative views, save in that inner and lonely world where I abode of nights and Sundays; I, too, had proved the wisdom of much doubting as to actual, literal events; but Little Miss was making me think of myself as almost raw-and-twenty credulous. In a lawyer's letter of formal conciseness, devoid of humanities, maintaining to the end an atmosphere of unemotional fact and figure that descended not even to conventional felicitations upon the result, I therefore acquainted Little Miss with the situation. So nearly perfect was this letter that it caused her to refer to me, in a later communication to Miss Caroline, as "your dry-and-dusty counting-machine of a lawyer, who doubtless considers the multiplication table as a cycle of sonnets." That, after I had merely determined to meet her palpable needs and had signed myself her obedient servant!

But I had convinced her. She admitted as much in words almost joyous, so that Miss Caroline went to be with her—to fetch her when she should be strong enough for the adventure of travel.

There were three weeks of my neighbor's absence—three weeks in which Clem "cleaned house", polished the battered silver, "neated" the rooms, and tried to arrange the remaining furniture so that it would look like a great deal of furniture indeed; three weeks in which Little Arcady again decked itself with June garlands and seemed not, at first glance, to belie its rather pretentious name; three weeks when I studied a calendar which impassively averred that I was thirty-five, a mirror which added weight to that testimony, and the game which taught me with some freshness at each failure that the greater game it symbolizes is not meant to be won—only to be played forever with as eager a zest, as daring a hope, as if victory were sure.

The season at hand found me in sore need of this teaching. It was then that errant impulse counselled rebellion against the decrees of calendar and looking-glass. If vatted wine in dark cellars turns in its bed and mutters seethingly at this time, in a mysterious, intuitive sympathy with the blossoming grape, a man free and above ground, with eyes to behold that miracle, may hardly hope to escape an answering thrill to its call.

Wherefore I played the game diligently, torn by the need of its higher lessons. And at last I was well instructed by it, as all may be who approach it thus, above a trivial lust for winning.

Two of us played in that provocative June. One was myself, alert for auspicious falls of the cards, yet stoical and undepressed when a deal promising to be almost too easy for interest was suddenly blocked by some trifling card. Thus was I schooled to expectations of a wise shallowness, not so deep but that they might be overrun by the moderate flow of human happiness. Thus one learned to expect little under much wanting, and to find his most certain profit in observing the freshness of those devices which left him frustrated. Jim, the other player of us, chased gluttonous robins on the lawn, ever with an indifferent success, but with as undimmed a faith, as fatuous a certainty, as the earliest of gods could have wished to see. And between us we achieved a conviction that the greater game is worth playing, even when one has discovered its terrific percentage of failures.

I was not unpleased to be alone during this period of discipline when my soul was perforce purged of its troublesome ferments. It was well that my neighbor should have gone where she might distract me never so little.

For it was at the season when Nature brews the irresistible philter. Always, I resolved to forego it like a man; always, like a man, I was overborne by the ancient longing, the formless "heimweh" that haunts the hearts of the unmated, and which in my own case made short work of stoic resolutions. And, since the game had taught me that yielding—where opposition is fated to avail not—is graceful in proportion to its readiness, I surrendered as quietly as might be.

One woman face had been wholly mine for hidden cherishing through all the years. A woman face, be it understood, not the face of a woman. At first it had been that; but with the years it had lost the lines that made it but that one. Imperceptibly, it had taken on an alien, vague softness that but increased its charm while diminishing its power to hurt.

It brought me now only a pensive pleasure and no feeling more acute. It was my ashes of roses, the music of my first love, its poignancies softened by time and memory into an ineffable, faint melody; it was the moon that drenched my bygone youth with wonder-light—a dream-face, exquisite as running water, unfolding flowers and those other sweets that poets try in vain to entangle in the meshes of word and rhythm.

This was the face my fancy brought to go with me into every June garden of familiar surprises. All of which meant that I was a poor thing of clay and many dolors, who still perversely made himself believe that somewhere between him and God was the one woman, breathing and conscious, perhaps even longing. More plainly, it meant that I was a man whose gift for self-fooling promised ably to survive his hair. Gravitation would presently pull down my shoulders, my face would flaunt "the wrinkled spoils of age", my voice would waver ominously, and I should forfeit the dignities befitting even this decay by still playing childish games of belief with some foolish dog. I would be a village "character" of the sort that is justly said to "dodder." And the judicious would shun observation by me, or, if it befell them, would affect an intense preoccupation lest I halt and dodder to them of a past unromantically barren.

There were moments in which I made no doubt of all this. But I fought them off as foolishly as did Jim his own intervals of clear seeing. Sometimes in a half doze he breathes a long, almost human sigh of perfect and despairing comprehension, as if the whole dead weight of his race's history flashed upon him; as if the woful failure of his species to achieve anything worth while, and the daily futilities of himself as an individual dog were suddenly revealed. In such instants he knows, perhaps, that there is little reward in being a dog, unless you cheat yourself by believing more than the facts warrant. But presently he is up to dash at a bird, with a fine forgetfulness, quite as startled by the trick of flight as in his first days. And I, envying him his gift of credulity, weakly strive for it.

As I have said, I had noted that in these free dreamings of mine the painted face above my neighbor's mantel seemed to have had a place long before I looked upon its actual lines. This perplexed me not a little; that the face should seem to have been familiar before I had seen it—the portrait, that it should have blended with and then almost replaced another's, so that now the woman face I saw was eloquent of two, though fittingly harmonized in itself. Must I lay to the philter's magic this audacious notion; that the face of Little Miss had tangibly come to me in some night of the mind? Sober, I was loath to commit this absurdity; but breasting drunkenly that tide of dreams, it ceased to be absurd.

And so I had plunged into the current again one early evening when the growing things seemed to have stopped reluctantly for rest, when the robins had fluted of their household duties the last time for the day, and when only the songs of children at a game were brought to me from a neighboring yard.

Unconsciously my thoughts fell into the rhythm of this song, with the result that I presently listened to catch its words—faint, childish, laughing, yet musical in the scented dusk:—

"King William was King James's son and from the royal race he sprung;Upon his breast he wore a star that showed the royal points of war.Go choose your east and choose your west, and choose the one that you love best.If she's not here to take your part, go choose another with all your heart.Down on this carpet you must kneel, low as the grass grows in yon field.Salute your bride and kiss her sweet, and then arise upon your feet."

The sentiment was ill suited to my own at the moment, but the raw-voiced little singers appealed to my ears not unpleasantly. Again the verse came—

"If she's not here to take your part—go choose another with all your heart!"

I heard wheels then, nearer than the singing,—the clumsy rumble of our big yellow 'bus. Voices were borne to me,—Clem's voice, Miss Caroline's and another not like her's, a voice firmer, yet a dusky-warm woman's voice. That was all I could think of at the time: perhaps the night suggested it; they had qualities in common. It was a woman's voice, but a determined woman's. I knew of course that Little Miss had come. But also I knew at once—this being her voice—that it would not be in my power to call her Little Miss.

THE STRAIN OF PEAVEY

It was too true that I could not call her "Little Miss," as I had lightly called her mother "Miss Caroline" at our first encounter. Of a dusky pallor was Miss Lansdale when I first beheld her under the night of her hair. As the waning light showed me her, I thought of a blossomed young sloe tree in her own far valley of the Old Dominion. Closer to her I could note only that she was dark but fair, for observations of this character became, for some reason, impracticable in her immediate presence.

She greeted me kindly, as her mother's lawyer; she was cordial to me a moment, as her mother's friend; but later, when these debts of civility had been duly paid, when we had gone from the outer dusk into candle light, she favored me only with occasional glances of the mildest curiosity, in which was neither kindness nor cordiality. Not that these had given way to their opposites; they were simply not there. Not the faintest hint of unfriendliness could I detect. Miss Lansdale had merely detached herself into a magnificent void of disinterest, from the centre of which she surveyed me without prejudice in moments when her glance could not be better occupied.

I have caught much the same look in the eyes of twelve bored jurymen who were, nevertheless, bound to give my remarks their impartial attention. Sometimes one may know from the look of these twelve that one's case is already as good as lost; or, at least, that an opinion has been reached which new and important testimony will be required to change.

It occurred to me as my call wore on that I caught even a hint of this prejudgment in the eyes of the young woman. It put me sorely at a disadvantage, for I knew not what I was expected to prove; knew not if I were on trial as her mother's lawyer, her mother's friend, or as a mere man. The latter seemed improbable as an offence, for was not my judge a daughter of Miss Caroline? And yet, strangely enough, I came to think that this must be my offence—that I was a man. She made me feel this in her careless, incidental glances, her manner of turning briskly from me to address her mother with a warmer show of interest than I had been able to provoke.

It seemed, indeed, opportune to remember at the moment that, while this alleged Little Miss was the daughter of Miss Caroline, she was likewise—and even more palpably, as I could note by fugitive swift glimpses of her face—the daughter of a gentleman whose metal had been often tried; one who had won his reputation as much by self-possession under difficulties as by the militant spirit that incurred them.

"Kate has little of the Peavey in her,—she is every inch a Lansdale," Miss Caroline found occasion to say; while I, thus provided with an excuse to look, remarked to myself that her inches, while not excessive, were unusually meritorious.

"Worse than that—she's a Jere Lansdale," was my response, though I tactfully left it unuttered for an "Indeed?" that seemed less emotional. I could voice my deeper conviction not more explicitly than by saying further to Miss Caroline, "Perhaps that explains why she has the effect of making her mother seem positively immature."

"My motherispositively immature," remarked the daughter, with the air of telling something she had found out long since.

"Then perhaps the other is the false effect," I ventured. "It is your mother's immaturity that makes you seem so—" I thought it kind to hesitate for the word, but Miss Lansdale said, again confidently:—

"Oh, but I reallyam," and this with a finality that seemed to close the incident.

Her voice had the warm little roughness of a thrush's, which sings through a throat that is loosely strung with wires of soft gold.

"Inmyday," began Miss Caroline; but here I rebelled, no longer perceiving any good reason to be overborne by her daughter. I could endure only a certain amount of that.

"Your day is to-day," I interrupted, "and to-morrow and many to-morrows. You are a woman bereft of all her yesterdays. Let your daughter have hadherday—let her have come to an incredible maturity. But you stay here in to-day with me. We won't be fit companions for her, but she shall not lack for company. Uncle Jerry Honeycutt is now ninety-four, and he has a splendid new ear-trumpet—he will be rarely diverting for Miss Lansdale."

But the daughter remained as indifferent to taunts as she had been to my friendly advances. It occurred to me now that her self-possession was remarkable. It was little short of threatening if one regarded her too closely. I wondered if this could really be an inheritance from her well-nerved father or the result of her years as teacher in a finishing school for young ladies. I was tempted to suspect the latter, for, physically, the creature was by no means formidable. Perhaps an inch or two taller than her mother, she was of a marked slenderness; acompletedslenderness, I might say—a slenderness so palpably finished as to details that I can only describe it as felicitous in the extreme. It seemed almost certain that her appearance had once been disarming, that the threat in her eye-flash and tilted head was a trick learned by contact with many young ladies who needed finishing more than they would admit.

Of course this did not explain why Miss Lansdale should visually but patently disparage me at this moment. I was by no means an unfinished young lady, and, in any event, she should have left all that behind; the moment was one wherein relaxation would have been not only graceful but entirely safe, for she was in no manner to be held accountable for my conduct.

Yet again and again her curious reserve congealed me back upon the stanch regard of Miss Caroline. My passion for that sprightly dame and her gracious acceptance of it were happily not to deteriorate under the regard of any possible daughter, however egregiously might we flaunt to her trained eye our need to be "finished."

The newcomer's reserve was indeed pregnable to no assault I could devise. Not even did she lighten when I said to her mother, in open mockery of that reserve, "Well, she cost you a lot of furniture that was really most companionable about the house," and paused with a sigh betokening a regretful comparison of values. That lance shattered against her Lansdale shield like all the others.

Ending my call, I felt vividly what I have elsewhere seen described as "the cosmic chill". The small, mighty, night-eyed, well-completed Miss Lansdale, with the voice of a golden jangle, had frozen it about me in lavish abundance.

I went home to play the game, until my eyes tired so that the face of king, queen, and knave leered at me in defeat or simpered sickeningly when I was able to shape their destinies. Thrice I lost interestingly and with profit to my soul, and once I won, though without elation, for we know that little skill may be needed to win when the cards fall right; whereas, to lose profitably is a mark of supreme merit.

Even after that I must have recourse to the wonted philter to bring sleep, the face of my vision being unaccountably the face of the true Little Miss before she had evolved into Miss Lansdale of the threatening self-possession. I refused to bother about the absurdity of this, for the sake of bringing sleep the sooner.

I was privileged to observe the following day that my neighbor's daughter was still of a dusky whiteness, the baffling, shaded whiteness of soft new snow in a cedar thicket. Incidentally she partook of another quality of soft new snow—one by no means so incommunicable.

And yet in sunlight I incurred the full, close look of her eyes, and no longer doubted the presence of a Peavey strain in her immediate ancestry. Far in their incalculable depths I saw a myriad of lights, brown-gold, that smouldered, ominously, even promisingly. It might never meet this young woman's caprice to be flagrantly a Peavey in my presence, but her capacity for this, if she chose to exercise it, I detected beyond a doubt. She was patently a daughter of Miss Caroline, and the cosmic chill had been an afterthought of her own.

She did me the honor, late in the afternoon of this day, to occupy an easy-chair within my vined porch. She went farther. She affected a polite interest in myself. But her craft was crude. I detected at once that she had fallen in love with my dog; that she came not to seek me, but to follow him, who had raced joyously from her at his first knowledge of my home-coming.

I was secretly proud of the exquisite thoroughness with which he now ignored her. Again and again he assured me in her very presence that the woman was nothing,couldbe nothing, to him. I knew this well enough—I needed no protestations from him; but I thought it was well that she should know it. I saw that he had probably consented to receive her addresses through a long afternoon, had perhaps eaten of her provender, and even behaved with a complaisance which could have led her to hope that some day she might be something to him. But I knew that he had not persistently faced the peril of being trampled to death by me in his pulpy infancy—so great his fear of our separation—to let a mere woman come between us at this day. And it was well that he should now tell her this in the plainest of words.

The woman seemed to view me with an increased respect from that very moment. She tried first to bring Jim to her side by a soft call that almost made me tremble for his integrity. But he did not so much as turn his head. His eyes were for me alone. With a rubber shoe flung gallantly over his shoulder, he danced incitingly before me, praying that I would pretend to be crazed by the sight of his prize and seek to wrench it from him.

But I pretended instead to be bored by his importunities, choosing to rub it in. To her who longed for his friendly notice,—a little throaty bark, a lift of the paw, perhaps a winsome laying of his head along her lap,—I affected indifference to his infatuation for me. I pretended always to have been a perfect devil of a fellow among the dogs, and professed loftily not to have divined the secret of my innumerable and unvarying conquests.

"Dogs are so foolishly faithful," remarked Miss Lansdale, with polite acerbity.

"I know it," I conceded; "that fellow thinks I am the most beautiful person in all the world."

She said "Indeed?" with an inflection and a sweeping glance at me which I found charged with meaning. But I knew well enough that I had for all time mastered a certain measure of her difficult respect.

"And he's such a fine dog, too," she added in a tone intended to convey to me the full extent of her pity for him.

"I have him remarkably well trained," I said. "I can often force him to notice people whom I like, especially if they are clever enough to let him see that they like me rather well."

"It would be almost worth while," she remarked with a longing look at Jim but none at me.

"Many have found it quite so," I said, ordering Jim to charge at my feet, "but it's a great bore, I assure you."

I needed not to be told that she envied me my power, and so deep and genuine appeared to be her love for him that secretly I hoped he would again be amiable to her during my absence on the morrow. The contrast of his manner on my return would further chasten her.

From the porch we both watched her move across the little stretch of lawn, and, at my whispered suggestion, Jim rose to his feet and barked her insultingly over the last twenty feet of it. I was delighted to note that this induced a shamed acceleration of her pace and a tighter clutching of her skirts. I thought it important to let her know clearly and at once just who was the master in my own house.

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