The lawyer accepted the information without remark, and hung up his telephone. He may have wondered what had brought about this change of heart in his cousin, but later, when the news of the engagement reached him, he understood. For he knew Helen in a way better than her lover did,—knew her as one knows the desired and unattainable.
A few days later Wright reached the office, and Hart told him of his plan to start for himself, asking for an early release because important business was waiting for his entire attention. Wright had arrived only that morning; he was seated before his broad desk, which was covered to the depth of several inches with blue prints, type-written specifications, and unopened mail. He had been wrestling with contractors and clients every minute since he had entered the office, and it was now late in the afternoon.
"So you are going to try it for yourself?" he commented, a new wrinkle gathering on his clouded brow. It occurred to him that Hart might be merely hinting politely for an advance in salary, but he dismissed the suspicion. "Have you had enough experience?" he asked bluntly.
"I'll be likely to get some more before long!" Hart replied, irritated by the remark.
"I mean of the actual conditions under which we have to build out here,—the contractors, the labor market, and so on? Of course you can leave at once if you wish to. I shouldn't want to stand in your light in any way. It is rather a bad time with Harmon home sick. But we can manage somehow, draw on the St. Paul office if necessary."
Jackson murmured his regret for the inconvenience of his departure at this juncture, and Wright said nothing more for a few minutes. He remembered now that some one had told him that Hart was drawing plans for Mrs. Phillips. This job had probably made the young architect ambitious to start for himself. He felt that Hart should have asked his consent before undertaking this outside work: at least it would have been more delicate to do so. But Wright was a kindly man, and bore no malice. In what he said next to the young architect he was moved by pure good will.
"I don't want to discourage you, Hart, but I know what sort of luck young fellows, the best of them, have these days when they start a new office. It's fierce work getting business, here especially."
"I suppose so," Hart admitted conventionally.
"The fine art side of the profession don't count much with client or contractor. It's just a tussle all the time!" he sighed, reflecting how he had spent two hours of his morning in trying to convince a wealthy client of the folly of cutting down construction cost from fifty to thirty cents a cubic foot.
"You young fellows just over from the other side don't always realize what it means to run an office. If you succeed, you have no time to think of your sketches, except after dinner or on the train, maybe. And if you don't succeed, you have to grab at every little job to earn enough to pay office expenses."
Hart's blank face did not commit him to this piece of wisdom.
"The only time I ever had any real fun was when I was working for the old firm, in New York. God! I did some pretty good things then. Old man Post used to trim me down when I got out of sight of the clients, but he let me have all the rope he could. And now,—why it's you fellows who have the fun!"
"And you who trim us down!" Hart retorted, with a grim little smile.
"Well, perhaps. I have to keep an eye on all you Paris men. You come over here well trained, damned well trained,—we can't do anything like it in this country,—but it takes a few years for you to forget that you aren't in la belle France. And some never get over their habit of making everything French Renaissance. You aren't flexible. Some of you aren't creative—I mean," he hastened to explain, getting warm on a favorite topic, "you don't feel the situation here. You copy. You try to express everything just as you were taught. But, if you want to do big work, you have got to feel things for yourself, by thunder!"
Jackson kept his immobile face. It did not interest him to know what Wright thought of the Beaux Arts men. Yet he had no intention of falling out with Wright, who was one of the leading architects of the country, and whose connection might be valuable to him.
"I see you don't care to have me preach," the older man concluded humorously. "And you know your own business best."
He remembered that the Powers Jackson gift for a school would call sooner or later for a large public building. Probably the family interests had arranged to put this important piece of work into Hart's hands. Wright hoped for the sake of his art that the trustees would put off building until the young architect had developed more independence and firmness of standard than he had yet shown.
"I think I understand a little better than I did two years ago what it takes to succeed here in Chicago," Jackson remarked at last.
Wright shot a piercing glance at him out of his tired eyes.
"It means a good many different kinds of things," the older man said slowly. "Just as many in architecture as elsewhere. It isn't the firm that is putting up the most expensive buildings that is always making the biggest success, by a long shot."
"I suppose not," Hart admitted.
And there the conversation lapsed. The older man felt the real impossibility of piercing the young architect's manner, his imperturbability. "He doesn't like me," he said to himself reproachfully.
For he wanted to say something to the younger man out of his twenty years of experience, something concerning the eternal conflict there is in all the professions between a man's ideals of his work and the practical possibilities in the world we have about us; something, too, concerning the necessity of yielding to the brute facts of life and yet not yielding everything. But he had learned from years of contact with men the great truth that talk never saves a man from his fate, especially that kind of talk. A man lives up to what there is in him, and Jackson Hart would follow the rule.
So he dug his hands into the letters on his desk, and said by way of conclusion:—
"Perhaps we can throw some things your way. There's a little job, now." He held up a letter he had just glanced at. "They want me to recommend some one to build a club-house at Oak Hills. There isn't much in it. They can't spend more than seven thousand dollars. But I had rather take that than do some other things."
"Thank you!" Hart replied with considerable animation. "Of course I want every chance I can get."
He took the letter from Wright's outstretched hand.
After the few swift months of spring and summer they were to be married, late in the fall.
Meanwhile above the lake at Forest Park, in a broad, open field, Mrs. Phillips's great house was rapidly rising. It was judged variously by those who had seen it, but it altogether pleased the widow; and the architect regarded it—the first independent work of his manhood—with complacency and pride. Helen had not seen it since the walls had passed the first storey, when, one day late in September, she made the little journey from the city with the architect, and walked over to the house from the Shoreham station, up the lake road.
It was a still, soft fall day, with all the mild charm of late summer that comes only in this region. The leaves still clung in bronzed masses to the little oaks; a stray maple leaf dipped down, now and then, from a gaudy yellow tree, and sailed like a bird along their path. There was a benediction in the country, before the dissolution of winter, and the girl's heart was filled with joy.
"If we could only live here in the country, Francis!"
"All the year?" he queried doubtfully.
"Yes, always! Even the worst days I should not feel lonely. I shall never feel lonely again, anyway."
As he drew her hand close to his breast, he said contentedly, with a large view of their future:—
"Perhaps we can manage it before long. But land is very dear in this place. Then you have to keep horses and servants, if you want to live comfortably in the country."
"Oh! I didn't think of all that."
They walked slowly, very close together, neither one anxious to reach the misty horizon, where in a bed of opalescent gray lay the beautiful lake. The sunshine and the fruity odors of the good earth, the tranquil vistas of bronze oaks, set the woman brooding on her nesting time, which was so close at hand. And the man was thinking likewise, in his way, of this coming event, anxiously, yet with confidence. The plans for the Graveland, the contractor's big apartment house, were already nearly finished,—and largely paid for. Very soon the office would be idle unless new work came in, but he counted confidently on a number of good things. There were the Rainbows, who had moved to Shoreham, having made a sudden fortune, and were talking of building. Then Mrs. Phillips, he knew, was doing what she could for him with Colonel Raymond. The railroad man had promised to look over the new house some day and meet the architect. Buoyant, convinced of his own ability, he saw the office crowded with commissions!
Suddenly the house shot up before their eyes, big and new in all the rawness of fresh brick and stone. It towered blusteringly above the little oaks, a great red-brick château, with a row of little round windows in its massive, thick-tiled red roof.
Helen involuntarily stood still and caught her breath. So this was his!
"Oh!" she murmured. "Isn't it big, Francis!"
"It's no three-room cottage," he answered, with a little asperity.
Then he led her to the front, where she could get the effect of the two wings, the southerly terrace toward the lake, the sweeping drive, and the classic entrance.
"I know I shall grow to like it, Francis," the girl said loyally. "It must be very pretty inside, with those lovely French windows; and this court is attractive, too."
She felt that she was hurting her lover in his tenderest spot, and she tried anxiously to find better words, to show him that it was only her ignorance which limited her appreciation. They strolled about among the refuse heaps of the builders, viewing the place at every angle in order to get all its effects. Just as they were about to enter the house, there came from the south road the sound of a puffing automobile, and presently Mrs. Phillips arrived in a large touring car, with some people who had been lunching with her at the Shoreham Club. They came slowly up the driveway to the house, talking and joking in a flutter of good-natured comment. The architect recognized instantly the burly form of Colonel Raymond. He was speaking when the car stopped:—
"Well, Louise, you will have to take us all in next season. I didn't know you were putting up a hotel like this."
"Hotel! It is a perfect palace!" exclaimed a short, plump woman who had some difficulty in dismounting. "I hope you are going to have a pergola. They're so nice. Every country house has a pergola nowadays."
"Why not an English garden and a yew hedge?" added a man who had on the red coat of the Hunt Club. "I hope you will have your stabling up to this, Mrs. Phillips."
Then they recognized the architect and Helen. Mrs. Phillips introduced them to her friends, and they all went inside to make a tour of the rooms. The painters, who were rubbing the woodwork, looked curiously at the invading party; then, with winks among themselves, turned indifferently to their tasks.
The visitors burst into ripples of applause over the hall with its two lofty stone fireplaces, the long drawing-room that occupied the south wing of the house, the octagonal breakfast room and the dining-room in the other wing. The architect led them about, explaining the different effects he had tried to get. He showed his work modestly, touching lightly on architectural points with a well-bred assumption that the visitors knew all about such things. The plump little woman followed close at his heels, drinking in all that he said. Helen wondered who she might be, until, in an eddy of their progress, Hart found a chance to whisper to her, "It's Mrs. Rainbow; she's getting points!"
He seemed very much excited about this, and the general good luck of being able to show these people over the house he had made. After the first floor had been exhausted, the party drifted upstairs in detachments. Helen, who had loitered after the others, could hear her lover's pleasant voice as he led the way from suite to suite above. The voices finally centred in Mrs. Phillips's bathroom, where the sunken bath and the walls of colored marble caused much joking and laughter....
"Can you tell me if Mrs. Phillips is here?" a voice sounded from the door. Helen turned with a start. The young girl who asked the question was dressed in a riding habit. Outside in the court a small party of people were standing beside their horses. The girl spoke somewhat peremptorily, but before Helen had time to reply, she added more cordially:—
"Aren't you Miss Spellman? I am Venetia Phillips."
Then the two smiled at each other and shook hands in the way of women who feel that they may be friends.
"I was off with my uncle the day you dined with mamma," she continued, "so I missed seeing you. Isn't this a great—barn, I was going to say." She laughed and caught herself. "I didn't remember! Mamma likes it so much. We have just been out with the hounds,—the first run of the season. But it was no fun, so we came on here. It's too early to have a real hunt yet. Do you ride?"
They sat down on the great staircase and were at once absorbed in each other. In the meantime Mrs. Phillips's party had returned from the upper storey by the rear stairs, and were penetrating the mysteries of the service quarters. Jackson was showing them proudly all the little devices for which American architecture is famous,—the interior telephone service, the laundry chutes, the electric dumb-waiters, the latest driers. These devices aroused Colonel Raymond's admiration, and when the others came back to the hall he took the architect aside and discussed driers earnestly for several minutes. From that they got to the heating system, which necessitated a visit to the basement.
Mrs. Phillips took this occasion to compliment Helen upon her lover's success:—
"You can be proud of your young man, Miss Spellman. He's done a very successful piece of work. Every one likes it, and it's all his, too," she added generously.
Helen found nothing to say in reply. The widow was not an easy person for her to talk to. On the single other occasion when they had met, in Mrs. Phillips's city house, the two women had looked into each other's eyes, and both had remained cold. The meeting of the two women had not been all that the architect had hoped it might be; for apart from this house which he was building, there were other of his many ambitions in which Mrs. Phillips could be very helpful to them. He did not intend that Helen and he, when they were married, should sink into that dull, retired manner of living that both his mother and Mrs. Spellman seemed to prefer. It would be good business for him to enlarge his acquaintance among the rich as fast as possible.
So this time when Helen found nothing amiable on the tip of her tongue to reply, Mrs. Phillips examined the younger woman critically, saying to herself, "She's a cold piece. She won't hold him long!" ...
At last the party gathered itself together and left the house. The big touring car puffed up to the door, and the visitors climbed in, making little final comments of a flattering nature to please the architect, who had charmed them all. He was assiduous to the very end, laughing again at Mrs. Rainbow's joke about the marble tub, which she repeated for the benefit of those who had not been upstairs.
After Hart had helped her to mount the steps of the car, she leaned over and gave him her hand.
"So glad to have met you, Mr. Hart," she said with plump impressiveness. "I am sure if we build, we must come to you. It's just lovely, everything."
"I shall have to give that away to Rainbow," the colonel joked. "There's nothing so bad to eat up money as a good architect."
Then he shook hands cordially with Hart, lit a cigarette, and swung himself to the seat beside Mrs. Phillips. After the car had started, the riders mounted. Hart helped Venetia Phillips to her seat, and slipped in a word about the hunt. But the girl leaned over on the other side toward Helen, with a sudden enthusiasm.
"I do so want to see you again, Miss Spellman! But I suppose you are very busy now."
"Oh, no," Helen protested, blushing at the girl's frank enthusiasm.
"But when you are married, can't I see a lot of you?"
Helen laughed. "Come and see me whenever you will!" she said, and the two held hands for a moment, while the man in the red coat talked with the architect.
When they had all gone, Jackson turned to Helen, a happy smile of triumph on his face.
"It seemed to take!"
There had not been one word of comment on the house itself, on the building as a home for generations of people. But Hart did not seem to notice that. He was flushed with the exhilaration of approval.
"Yes," Helen answered, throwing all the animation she could into the words; "I think they all liked it."
She was silent, her thoughts full of vague impressions gathered from the little incident of the afternoon. There had been revealed to her an unknown side of her lover, a worldly side, which accorded with his alert air, his well-trimmed mustache, and careful attention to dress. He had been very much at home with all these people, while she had felt more or less out of her element. He knew how to talk to them, how to please them, just as he knew how to build a house after their taste for luxury and display. Although he was a poor, hardworking young architect, he could talk hunters or motor cars or bridge whist, as the occasion demanded. Whether it was due to his previous experience or to an instinct for luxury, he was, in fact, very much one of them!
She cast a timid look at the great façade above them, over which the cold shadows of the autumn evening were fast stealing, leaving the building in its nudity still more hard and new and raw. She was glad it was not to be her fate to live there in all its grandeur and stiff luxury.
The architect had to speak to the superintendent of the building, and Helen sat down on the stone balustrade of the terrace to wait for him. The painters were leaving their job, putting on their coats as they hurried from the house. They scarcely cast a glance her way as they passed out, disappearing into the road, fleeing from the luxurious abode and the silent woods, which were not theirs, to the village and the city. The girl mused idly about them and their lives, and about the other people who had come there this afternoon to look over the house, and about the house itself. She reflected how much more she liked the sketch Jackson had made of a little club-house for the Oak Hills Country Club. It was a rough little affair, the suggestion of which the architect had got from a kodak of a Sicilian farm-house he had once taken. But this great American château was so different from what she had supposed her lover would build, this caravansary for the rich, this toy where they could hide themselves in aristocratic seclusion and take their pleasures. And the thought stole into her mind that he liked it, this existence of the rich and prosperous, their sports and their luxuries,—and would want to earn with the work of his life just their pleasures, their housing, their automobiles and hunters. It was all strange to her experience, to her dreams!
From the second floor there came to her the sound of voices:—
"I tells you, Muster Hart, you got to rip the whoal damn piping out from roof to basement if you wants to have a good yob of it. I tole you that way back six weeks ago. It waren't specified right from the beginning."
"I'll speak to Rollings about it to-morrow and see what can be done."
"That's what you say every time, and he don't do nutting," the Swede growled.
"See here, Anderson! Who's running this job?" ...
The girl strolled away from the voices toward the bluff, where she could see the gray bosom of the lake. The twilight trees, the waveless lake soothed her: they were real, her world,—she felt them in her soul! The house back there, the men and women of it, were shadows on the marge.
"Nell!" her lover called.
"Coming, Francis."
When he came up to her she rested her head on his shoulder, looking at him with vague longing, desiring to keep him from something not clearly defined in her own mind. Her lover drew her to him and kissed her, once, twice, while her eyes searched his wistfully. She seemed passive and cold in his arms. But suddenly she closed her longing eyes, and her lips met his, hungrily, tensely, in the desire to adore, to love abundantly, which was her whole life.
"We must hurry to get that train,—dear. When we live out here we'll have to sport a motor car, won't we?" he said buoyantly.
She answered slowly, "I don't know that I should want to live just here, after all."
"Why, I thought you were crazy about the country! And I've been thinking it might be the very thing for us to do. There's such a lot of building in these places now since business has looked up. Mrs. Phillips has asked me several times why I didn't move out here on the shore. Just before she left to-day she said in a joking way that if I wanted to build a lodge for her, I might take it for a year or so. Of course that's a joke. But I know she's bought lately a lot more property on the ravine, and she might be willing to let me have a small bit on reasonable terms. She's been so friendly all along!"
He was still in the flush of his triumph, and talked rapidly of all the plans that opened out before his fervent ambition. Suddenly he took note of the girl's mood and said sharply, "Nell, I believe you don't like her!"
"Why do you say that!" she exclaimed, surprised in her inner thoughts. "I don't really know."
"Why, it's plain enough. You never talk to her. You are always so cold! Louise is a chatty person; she likes to have you make an effort for her. And you treated Mrs. Rainbow in the same way."
"Oh, Francis! I didn't mean to be cold. Ought I to like them if you are to do work for them?"
Her lover laughed at her simplicity. Nevertheless, he felt somewhat disturbed at Helen's indifference to the social aspect of their marriage venture. He wished to make a proper stir in the puddle, and he was beginning to suspect that Helen had little aptitude for this distinctively woman's side of matrimony.
"Rich people always puzzle me," she continued apologetically. "They always have, except uncle Powers, and you never thought of him as rich! I don't feel as if I knew what they liked. They are so much preoccupied with their own affairs. That other time when I met Mrs. Phillips she was very much worried over the breakfast room and the underbutler's pantry! What is an underbutler's pantry, Francis?"
This raillery over the needs of the rich sounded almost anarchistic to the architect in his present mood, and they walked to the station silently in the gathering darkness. But after a time, on the train, he returned to the events of the afternoon, remarking with no relevancy:—
"She can do anything she likes with Raymond. It would be a big stroke to get that railroad business!"
As Helen made no reply to this observation, they sank again into silent thought.
The night before their marriage the architect told her exultantly that Colonel Raymond had sent for him that afternoon to talk over work for the railroad corporation.
"That's Mrs. Phillips's doing," he told Helen. "You must remember to say something to her about it to-morrow if you get the chance. It's likely to be the biggest wedding present we'll have!"
"I am glad!" Helen replied simply, without further comment.
He thought that she did not comprehend what this good fortune would mean to them. And he was quite mystified when she sent him away and refused to see him again before the ceremony of the following day. He could not realize that in some matters—a few small matters—he had bruised the woman's ideal of him; he could not understand why these last hours, before she took him to her arms forever, she wished to spend alone with her own soul in a kind of prayer....
There were only a few people present at the marriage in the little Maple Street house the next day. Many of their more fashionable friends still lingered away from the city although it was late in October. Mrs. Phillips had made a point of coming to the wedding, even putting off a projected trip to New York, and after much urging she had been made to bring Venetia, who was strangely bent on going to this wedding. Pemberton, an old friend of the Spellmans, who had recently been asked to join the Powers Jackson trustees, was there, and also little Cook, who was the backbone of the new office. Everett Wheeler was the best man. He and Hollister had put off their yearly fishing trip to do honor to Jackson Hart, who had won their approval, because the young man had swallowed his disappointment about the will and was going to marry a poor girl. Hollister and Pemberton had brought Judge Phillips with them, because he was in town and liked weddings and ought to send the pair a goodly gift. Of the presence of all these and some others the young architect was agreeably conscious that October day.
Only that morning, on the way to the house, Everett had referred to the great school building, a monumental affair, which the trustees would have to build some day. He said nothing that might commit the trustees in any way. Nevertheless, it was in the aroma of this new prospect, and of all the other good fortune which had come to him since he had taken up his burden of poverty, that Jackson Hart was married.
But Helen walked up to him to be married, in a dream, unconscious of the whole world, with a mystery of love in her heart. When the ceremony was over, she looked up into her husband's resolute face, which was slightly flushed with excitement. Venetia, standing by her uncle's side a few steps away, could see tears in the bride's eyes, and the girl wondered in her heart what it meant.
Did the woman know now that the man who stood there face to face with her, her husband, was yet a stranger to her soul? She raised her lips swiftly to him, as if to complete the sacrament, and there before all he bowed his head to kiss her.
The Lady Venetia de Phillips, as the young woman used to call herself in the doll age, had never set foot in a common street car, or, indeed, in anything more public than a day coach on the suburban train; and in that only because the railroad had not found it profitable to provide as yet in that service a special coach for her class. For Mrs. Phillips, who had known what it was to ride in an Ottumwa buggy, comfortably cushioned by the stout arm of an Ottumwa swain, understood intuitively the cardinal principle of class evolution, which is separation. Therefore she had carefully educated her children according to that principle.
So it happened shortly before Mrs. Phillips had taken possession of her new home that Miss Phillips, wishing to pay a visit to her new friend who lived on the North Side of the city, was driving in her mother's victoria, in dignity, according to her estate. Beside her sat her favorite terrier, Pete, scanning the landscape of the dirty streets through which they were obliged to pass from the South to the North Side. Suddenly, as the carriage turned a corner, Pete spied a long, lank wharf rat, of a kind that did not inhabit his own more cleanly neighborhood. The terrier took one impulsive leap between the wheels of the victoria, and was off up Illinois Street after the rat. It was a good race; the Lady Venetia's sporting blood rose, and she ordered the coachman to follow. Suddenly there dashed from an alley a light baker's wagon, driven by a reckless youth. Pete, unmindful of the clattering wagon, intent upon his loping prey, was struck full in the middle of his body: two wheels passed diagonally across him, squeezing him to the pavement like an india-rubber ball. For a moment he lay there stretched in the street, and then he dragged himself to the sidewalk, filling the air with hideous howls. The passers-by stopped, but the reckless youth in the baker's wagon, having leaned out to see what damage had been done, grinned, shook his reins, and was off.
Before the coachman had brought the victoria to a full stop Venetia was out and across the street. Pete had crawled into an alley, where he lay in a little heap, moaning. When his mistress tried to gather him into her skirt he whimpered and showed his teeth. Something was radically wrong! The small boys who had gathered advised throwing Pete into the river, and offered to do the deed. But Venetia, the tears falling from her eyes, turned back into the street to take counsel with the coachman. A young man who was hurrying by, swinging a little satchel and whistling to himself, stopped.
"What's up?" he asked, ceasing to whistle at sight of the girl's tears.
Venetia pointed to the dog, and the stranger, pushing the small boys aside, leaned over Pete.
"Gee! he's pretty well mashed, ain't he? Here, Miss, I'll give him a smell of this and send him to by-by."
He opened his little satchel and hunted for a bottle. Venetia timidly touched his arm.
"Please don't kill him!"
"That's just what I'm going to do, sure thing!" He paused, with the little vial in his hand, and looked coolly at the girl. "You don't want the pup to suffer like that?"
"But can't he be saved?"
The stranger looked again at Pete, then back at Venetia. Finally he tied a handkerchief over the dog's mouth, and began to examine him carefully.
"Let's see what there's left of you after the mix-up, Mr. Doggie. We'll give you the benefit of our best attention and skill,—more'n most folks ever get in this world,—because you are the pet of a nice young lady. If you were just an alley-cat, you wouldn't even get the chloroform. Well, Miss, he'd have about one chance in a hundred, after he had that hind leg cut off."
"Are you a doctor? Do you think that you could cure him? Mamma will be very glad to pay you for your services."
"Is that so?" the stranger remarked. "How do you know that my services don't come too high for your mother's purse? Well, come on, pup! We'll see what can be done for you."
Drawing the improvised muzzle tighter, he gathered Pete up in a little bundle. Then he strode down the street to the west. The coachman drew up beside the curb and touched his hat.
"Won't you get in?" Venetia asked.
"It's only a step or so to my place," he answered gruffly. "You can follow me in the carriage."
But she kept one hand on Pete, and walked beside the stranger until he stopped at an old, one-story, wooden cottage. Above the door was painted in large black letters, "S. COBURN, M.D., PHYSICIAN AND SURGEON."
"May I come in?" the girl asked timidly.
"Sure! Why would I keep you sitting on the door-step?"
Inside there was a little front hall apparently used as a waiting-room for patients. Back of this was a large bare room, occupying the remaining floor space of the cottage, into which the doctor led the way. A wooden bench extended the entire length of this room underneath a row of rough windows, which had been cut in the wall to light the bench. Over in one corner was a cot, with the bedclothes negligently dragging on the floor. Near by was an iron sink. On a table in the centre of the room, carefully guarded by a glass case, was a complex piece of mechanism which looked to the girl like one of the tiresome machines her teacher of physics was wont to exhibit.
"My laboratory," the doctor explained somewhat grandly.
Venetia stepped gingerly across the cluttered floor, glancing about with curiosity. The doctor placed the dog on the table and turned on several electric lights.
"You'll have to help at this performance," he remarked, taking off his coat.
Together they gave Pete an opiate and removed the muzzle. The doctor then turned him over and poked him here and there.
"Well," he pronounced, "Pete has a full bill. Compound fracture, broken rib, and mashed toes. And I don't know what all on the inside. He has a slim chance of limping around on three legs. Shall I give him some more dope? What do you say?"
"Pete was a gamy dog," Venetia replied thoughtfully. "I think he would like to have all his chances."
"Good!" The doctor tossed aside the sponge that he had held ready to give Pete his farewell whiff. He told the girl how to hold the dog, and how to touch the sponge to his nose from time to time. They were absorbed in the operation when the coachman pushed his way into the room.
"What shall I do, Miss, about the horses? Mis' Phillips gave particler instructions I wasn't to stay out after five-thurty. It's most that now."
"Tell him to go home," the doctor ordered. "We'll be an hour more."
"But how shall I get home then?" the girl asked, perplexed.
"On your feet, I guess, same as most folks," the doctor answered, testing a knife on his finger. "And the cars ain't stopped running on the South Side, have they?"
"I don't know. I never use them," Venetia replied helplessly.
The doctor put the knife down beside Pete and looked at the girl from her head to her feet, a teasing smile creeping over his swarthy face.
"Well, it's just about time for you to find out what they're good for. I'll take you home myself just to see how you like them. You won't get hurt, not a bit. You may go, Thomas!" He waved his hand ironically to the coachman. "And when you go out, be good enough to slip the latch. We have a little business to attend to in here, and don't want to be interrupted."
When the coachman had left, Venetia turned to the doctor with a red face, and copying her mother's most impressive tones, asked:—
"What would you like me to do now, Dr. Coburn?"
"Nothing special. Turn your back if you don't like to see me take a chop out of doggie."
He laughed at her dignity; therefore she kept her face turned resolutely on poor Pete. She could not help being interested in the man as she watched his swift movements. The doctor was stocky and short, black-haired, with a short black mustache that did not disguise the perpetual sardonic smile of his lips. She noticed that his trousers were very baggy and streaked at the bottoms with mud. They were the trousers of a man who, according to her experience, was not a gentleman. The frayed cravat, which showed its cotton filling, belonged to the same category as the trousers. But there was something in the fierce black eyes, the heavy jaw, the nervous grip of the lips when the man was thinking, that awed the girl. The more Venetia looked at him, the more she was afraid of him; not afraid that he would do any harm to her, but vaguely afraid of his strength, his force. His bare arms were thick and hairy, although the fingers were supple, and he touched things lightly. Altogether he was a strange person in her little world, and somewhat terrifying.
The doctor talked all the time, while he worked swiftly over the dog, describing to the girl just what he was doing. Venetia watched him without flinching, though the tears would roll down her face. She put one hand under Pete's limp head to hold it, as she would have liked to have her head held under the same circumstances. At last the doctor straightened himself and exclaimed:—
"Correct! He's done up in first-class style." He went to the sink and washed his arms and hands. "Yes, Peter is as well patched as if the great Dr. Cutem had done it himself and charged you ten thousand dollars for the job. I donno' but it's better done. And he would have charged you all right!" He gave a loud, ironical laugh and swashed the water over his bare arms. Then he came back to the operating table, wiping his hands and arms on a roller towel that was none too clean.
"You can quit that sponge now, Miss, and I guess doggie won't appreciate the little attention of holding his head yet awhile. He hasn't got to the flower-and-fruit stage yet, have you, eh, purp?"
Venetia stood like a little girl, awkwardly waiting for orders.
"What's your name?" the doctor demanded abruptly.
"Venetia—Venetia Phillips."
"Well, Miss Venetia, you seem fond of animals. Would you like to see my collection?"
Without waiting for an answer he strode to the farther end of the room and opened a trap-door.
"Come over here!"
The girl peeped through the trap-door into the cellar. There, in a number of pens, were huddled a small menagerie of animals,—dogs, cats, guinea-pigs, rabbits.
"What do you do with all of them?" the girl asked, her heart sinking with foreboding.
"Cut 'em up!"
"Cut them up?"
"Sure! And dose 'em. This is an experimental laboratory." The doctor waved his hand rather grandly over the dirty room. "There are not many like it in the city of Chicago, I can tell you. I am conducting investigations, and I use these little fellers."
"It's horrid!" the girl exclaimed, looking apprehensively at Pete.
"Not a bit of it!" The doctor reached down his hand and pulled up a rabbit, a little mangy object, which tottered a few steps and then fell down as if dizzy. "Jack's had fifteen drops of the solution of hydrochlorate of manganese this morning. He looks kind of dopy, don't he? He'll be as smart as a trivet to-morrow. But I guess he's about reached his limit of hydrochlorate, eh, Jack?"
In spite of herself the girl's curiosity was aroused, and when the doctor had returned Jack to his pen, she asked, "What's that queer machine over there?"
"That's to pump things into your body, to squirt medicines into you, instead of dropping them into your tummy loose, as doctors usually do. See? When I stick this long needle into you and work this handle, a little stream of the thing I want to give you is pumped into your body at the right spot. Have you got anything the matter with your liver? I am working on livers just now. Would you like to have me try it on you? No! I thought not. That's why Jack has to take his dose every morning."
He went into his explanation more thoroughly, and they talked of many things that were as wonderful to Venetia, brought up in the modern city of Chicago, as if she had come out of Thibet.
"I suppose I shall have to leave Pete here," she said at last. "May I come to see him sometimes?"
"Sure! As often as you like. I'm generally in afternoons. I'll telephone if the patient's pulse gets feeble or his temperature goes up."
"You needn't make fun of me! And I think I can find my way home alone," she added, as the doctor took his hat from the table and jammed it on his head.
"I said I'd go home with you. I am not going to miss seeing you take that first ride on the cable, not much! Perhaps you won't mind walking across the bridge and up the avenue to the cable line? It's a pretty evening, and it will do you good to take the air along the river."
So the two started for the city and crossed the busy thoroughfare of the Rush Street Bridge just as the twilight was touching the murky waters of the river. The girl was uncomfortably conscious that the man by her side was a very shabbily dressed escort. She was glad that the uncertain light would hide her from any of her acquaintances that might be driving across the bridge at this hour. The doctor seemed to be in no hurry; he paused on the bridge to watch a tug push a fat grain boat up the river, until they were almost caught by the turning draw.
"That's a fine sight!" he remarked.
"Yes, the sunset is beautiful," she replied conventionally.
"No! I mean that big vessel loaded with grain. That's what you live on: it's what you are,—that and a lot of dirty cattle over in the pens of the stock yard. That's you, Miss Venetia,—black hair, pink cheeks, and all!"
"What a very materialistic way of looking at life!" Venetia replied severely.
"Lord, child!" the doctor exclaimed ironically. "Who taught you that horrid word?" Then he proceeded to give her a little lecture on the beauties of physiology, which occupied her attention all the way to the cable car, so that she forgot her snobbish anxieties.
The car was crowded, and no one of the tired men who were reading their newspapers was gallant enough to offer her a seat. So she was obliged to stand crowded in a corner, swaying from a strap overhead, while the persistent doctor told her all about the car, the motive power, the operatives, the number of passengers carried daily, the dispute over the renewal of the franchise for the road, and kindred matters of common concern.
"Now, it's likely enough some of your folks own a block of watered stock in this concern," he concluded in his clear, high voice, that made itself felt above the rattle of the car. "And you are helping to pay them their dividends. Some day, though, maybe the rest of us won't want to go on paying them five cents to ride in their old cars. Then the water will dry up, the stock will go down, and perhaps you'll have one or two dresses less every year. You'll remember then I told you the reason why!"
Venetia had heard enough about stocks and bonds to know that a good deal of the Phillips money was invested in the City Railway. But she had also learned from her earliest youth that it was very vulgar for a man to discuss money matters with a girl. Furthermore, peering about the crowded conveyance, she had caught sight of Porter Howe, one of her brother Stanwood's friends. He was looking at her and the doctor, and she began to feel uncomfortable again. It had never occurred to her that the young men of her class were in the habit of using the street cars, at least until they had reached those assured positions at the head of industry which always awaited them.
So the novelty of the ride in the public car had something of torture in it, and she was glad enough to escape through the front door at Eighteenth Street.
"Won't you come in?" she asked the doctor politely when they came to the formidable pile of red brick where she lived.
"Thanks! I guess not to-day. I don't believe your folks will want me to stay to supper, and I am getting hungry. Hope you enjoyed your ride. Some day I'll come and take you for a trolley ride somewhere else."
He shook her hand vigorously and laughed. Then he started briskly for the city, his hands thrust in his trousers pockets, his black felt hat drawn forward over his brows. But Venetia had barely mounted the first bank of steps before she heard her name called in a loud voice from the street.
"Say, Miss Venetia!"
The doctor was shouting back to her, one hand at the side of his mouth.
"Don't you worry about that pup! I think I can bring him round all right."
She nodded nervously and stepped into the vestibule with a sense of relief from her companion. She knew that Dr. Coburn was what her brother called a "mucker," and her mother spoke of as a "fellow." Yet she felt that there was something in the man to be respected, and this insight, it may be said, distinguished Miss Venetia from her mother and her brother.
Pete was a very sick dog, but as Dr. Coburn boasted, no pampered patient in a private hospital ever had better care. Ultimately he recovered from his operation and went about gayly on three legs, but not until Venetia had made a good many visits to the squalid "laboratory" and had come to feel very much at home among the animals and scientific apparatus that the eccentric young doctor had gathered about him. Mrs. Phillips, naturally, had not consented to these visits to the "dog doctor," as she persisted in calling Pete's saviour, until Venetia had enlisted the services of Helen as chaperon. Then, being very much occupied these days with furnishing the new house, she paid little attention to Venetia's long afternoons spent in the company of the architect's wife.
These visits were, perhaps, the most educational experiences that the girl had ever had. One day she and Helen had watched the doctor take apart the queer-looking pump that occupied the post of honor in the laboratory, examined the delicate valves of the machine, and learned the theory of its use. Once they got courage to witness voluntarily its application on a rabbit. Venetia winced nervously when she saw the long gold needle sink into the tender breast of the small beast, the muscles relax, the heart stop beating altogether; but she worked one of the valves of the pump steadily as the doctor directed.
"Ain't that quick work!" he shouted enthusiastically. "It didn't take the stuff thirty seconds to strike the right spot."
Venetia nodded her head gravely, as he proceeded step by step in his demonstration. When he finished she asked with a gravity that made Helen smile:—
"Aren't you a very celebrated man?"
Even her world paid some respect to notable achievements in science, and she had heard Judge Phillips speak admiringly of certain recent discoveries by a famous physiologist. The doctor, however, roared with ironic laughter.
"Not celebrated exactly! At the medical societies they call me the crazy fakir. I don't believe there's a first-class doctor in the city who would take the time to look at this machine. They'd want to know first what some feller in Vienna thought about it. I might starve for all the help I've ever had here! Doctors don't want any one to do things on his own hook: they're jealous, just as jealous as women. But I guess I'm going to show 'em a thing or two not in the books. Let me tell you on the quiet, Miss Venetia,—I'm going over to Paris with this pump of mine and show it off in one of their hospitals. Then you'll see something!"
The girl tried to look intelligent.
"If I can convince some Frenchman or German that I am on to a big idea, why the whole pack of pill-sellers over here will fall into line so quick you can't see 'em."
"Perhaps we shall go over to Paris this summer, too. How I should like to be there when you are, and see you show the pump!"
In her experience there was nothing remarkable in going to Europe: one went to hear an opera, to order a few gowns, to fill out an idle vacation.
"Well, I may have to go steerage, but I'll get there somehow."
While they had been discussing the machine, a small, white-faced man, who looked as if he might be a waiter or some kind of skilled mechanic, had come into the laboratory and nodding to the doctor took a chair at the farther end of the room with the manner of one who was quite at ease in the place. His face, which was aged by illness or care, interested Helen greatly. She watched him while the others talked, wondering what his relation to the doctor could be, whether that of patient or friend. He sat huddled up on his chair, one worn-out boot thrust forward from a ragged trouser leg, curiously scanning the young girl, who seemed in her fresh beauty and rich clothes decidedly out of harmony with the dingy room. When Venetia spoke of going abroad as casually as she might have mentioned going to the country, a sarcastic smile crept over his face. He seemed to possess the full power of patience, as if a varied experience with a buffeting world had taught him to accept rather than to resist. His business there, whatever it might be, could wait, had always waited.
"Hussey, here, is the only feller that I ever found besides myself who has any faith in the old pump," Coburn remarked presently by way of introduction, half turning toward the silent man, and smiling as if he thoroughly enjoyed the joke of having this one convert. "He's always after me to try it on him,—he says he's got something the matter with his lungs,—but I guess it's purely a scientific interest that makes him offer to be the first victim. Gee! Wouldn't I like to take him at his word!"
He worked one of the delicate valves of the machine, squirting through the needle a thin stream of water in the direction of Hussey.
"Why don't you do it then?" the man asked in an indifferent tone. "I'm ready any time you say."
"Ain't he got nerve, now?" the doctor appealed to Venetia, his eyes twinkling sardonically. "Any doctor would tell him for nothing that it was just plain murder to stick that needle into his lungs. If I am wrong, you know, he'd be a goner, bleed to death."
"I guess I ain't built very different from that guinea-pig," the man observed placidly. "And I have seen you put it into one of them often enough."
"Why don't you try it, if he's willing?" Venetia asked the doctor breathlessly.
Helen and Coburn laughed, and even the silent Hussey smiled grimly.
"Maybe, young lady, you wouldn't mind if I tried it on you! Can't you get up a real good heart trouble now?" the doctor quizzed.
"Would it make any particular difference if I hadn't anything the matter with me?" Venetia asked quickly. "You can put it into me and see what it does, anyway."
"Good nerve!" Coburn laughed admiringly. "See, Mrs. Hart, I've got two converts now. Don't you want to make a third?"
Then bursting into his loud laugh, which seemed to be directed at himself, Coburn walked to the rear of the room, raised a trap-door, and whistled for Pete. He thrust his hand down, caught the dog by the neck, and placed him on the laboratory table for exhibition.
"Nothing worse than a good aristocratic limp, Peter," the doctor pronounced with complacency. "Just come here and look at that ear, Venetia! What do you think of that? It isn't quite the right shade, but I couldn't lay my hands on a terrier that was as dark as Pete."
"What have you done to his ear?" the girl demanded.
"He hadn't much of an ear left, when I came to look him over. So I grafted a new piece on. And I cropped it, too, so it would look like its mate. Pretty neat job?"
"That's why you wouldn't let me see his head when you were changing the bandages!"
"Sure! This ear was to be a real Christmas surprise for a good little girl."
"Poor old Pete!"
"What's the matter with Pete? Don't drop your tears that way. He's forgotten by this time he ever had another leg. Say!" he added abruptly, "what do you think the job's worth?"
"I don't know," Venetia replied a little haughtily. "Please send your bill to mamma."
"And suppose I make it half what Dr. Cutem would charge for doing the same job on you, what would mamma say? Pete's worth half, ain't he, Mrs. Hart?"
"Not to me," Helen answered lightly.
"Well, you'd have thought he was the way she went on about him that afternoon I found them out in the street. But that's the luck of a poor doctor. You do your best, and, the patient cured, the bill seems large!"
The doctor's joke evidently distressed Venetia, who had been taught that it was low to discuss bills. The silent man still smiling to himself over the girl, rose and spoke to the doctor in a low tone. Coburn nodded.
"The same thing? Yes, I'll be over pretty soon."
Then Hussey left the laboratory with a slight nod of his head in the direction of the women. When he had gone and the outer door had banged behind him, the doctor remarked thoughtfully:—
"I guess it isn't just pure interest in science that makes him ready to try the pump."
"Tell me about him," Helen asked quickly.
"He lost his little girl two months ago,—malnutrition, that is to say slow starvation, and I guess his wife's not got long to live. That's why he came in this afternoon. But I can't do anything for her now, nor anybody else. She's just beat out. They came from somewhere in Pennsylvania, a little country place. He's a bookbinder by trade,—does fancy work,—and work gave out in the country, so he tried New York. He had some kind of trouble there with the union and came on here. But he might as well have stayed where he was,—there ain't anything in this town for him, and the union is after him again. He's been up against it pretty much ever since he started. That's his story."
"Poor woman!" Helen exclaimed, with a quick sense of her own new happiness. "Do you suppose she would like to have me call on her?"
"I don't know. Perhaps she might. But he's rather sour on folks in general," the doctor answered indifferently.
"Where do they live?"
"Out west here a ways on Arizona Avenue."
"I know that district. The River settlement is over there on Arizona Avenue. But I didn't know any Americans lived there. They are mostly Poles or Germans, I thought," Helen added.
"I guess people like the Husseys live most anywhere they can find a hole to crawl into," Coburn answered brusquely. "So you are one of those settlement cranks?"
"I had classes there for a time before I was married," Helen admitted.
"Got sick of it? Found you couldn't scrub up the world in a few weeks, or even a small piece of it? I took you for a woman of too much sense to mix in that foolishness. It might do Venetia here some good, teach her a thing or two. She never rode in a street car till I showed her how."
"I only gave it up when I was going to marry, and my husband thought I was not strong enough," Helen protested stoutly. "But it's the most interesting—"
"See here! Look at this floor. Would it clean it any to pour a spoonful of water here and there? Well, that's what your social settlements with all their statistics and their investigations are doing. I tell you I know because I have been one of them, one of the 'masses.' I have been dirt poor all my life. I lived once for six months in a tenement room with five other men. 'Understanding and sympathy'? Rot! You can't really know anything about folks until you earn your bread as they do, because you have to or starve; and live and eat and marry as they do because you have to. Do you suppose those English know anything about their Hindoos? Well, these settlement folks know just about as much of what the people around them really are as the English know about those darkies they boss."
"But they're trying to understand, to help."
"What's the good of their help? What men need is a chance to help themselves at the pot. And the only way they'll ever get that is to fight for it. Fight the hoggish ones who want the whole loaf. Let 'em get out and fight, same as the people always have had to when they weren't content to starve. Then you'd see what this settlement 'sympathy and understanding' amounts to."
"Fighting never helps."
"Don't it now? What does your science or history tell you? Men have fought in one way or another for pretty nearly everything they've got!"
"Perhaps that is the trouble."
"Not much," he retorted, as if he were trying to convince himself as much as her. "The real fact is, most of the world isn't worth the bother of saving it from its fate. They are refuse junk. Just junk, so many tons of flesh and bone, with not wit enough to hold their appetites. That's why the worst robbers get on top and ride, every time. They always will because they are the best fighters. No, young woman, the ruck of people aren't worth bothering about. Life is the cheapest thing on this planet; pious folks with all their blart can't alter that fact. It's cheap, and mean, and can't fight."
"What's the good of that machine, if it's only fit to mend such bad flesh?"
"You think you've got me," he laughed back. "Now I'll tell you why. I want to show every stupid doctor in this town that I've got a trick worth two of his. All the high-toned doctors have turned me down, every one I ever got at. But I can fight. See? That's why I starve myself and live in this chicken-coop. I could make money enough gassing patients and selling them a lot of wind. Don't you think I could eat well and dress well and be as sleek and fine as the young men Venetia thinks are the right thing? I guess I could. Do you know Dr. Parks on the North Side? Two years ago he offered to take me into his office if I would quit fooling with these experiments and devote myself to private practice. Parks is earning a good twenty thousand a year. The pickings in that office would be considerable, I guess."
"But you wanted something better than money!"
"Better? I don't know about that. I want Parks and all the other big-mouths in the profession just salaming there before me for one thing."
"No,—that isn't much better than wanting money. You don't want to help. To want to help, to care about helping, that's the best thing in men and women,—caring to help others whether what they do succeeds in the end or fails. Nobody can know that."
The doctor's face lost its ironical grin; he looked at Helen very gravely.
"That feeling you talk about must be a kind of extra sense which I haven't got. It's like the color nerve or the sound nerve. I've always been color-blind. In the same way I haven't that other feeling you talk about. And I guess most folks in this world are like me. If they felt like you, why it wouldn't be the same old world we know."
"It must be a cruel world of murder and hate, if you haven't that."
"Well, I guess it's pretty much the same world that old Michael Angelo saw when he got up in the morning, or Julius Cæsar, or any of the rest of them. It's a mighty lively sort of place, too, if you know how to forage for yourself."
Venetia, who had been listening to the discussion wide-eyed, burst out explosively:—
"What are you two scrapping about, anyway? Aren't you going to see that sick woman?"
"Right you are," Dr. Coburn laughed. "I'll have to trot over there pretty soon."
"And I am going to see her, too, if you'll give me the address," Helen added. "By the way, Dr. Coburn, you know my husband, don't you?"
A peculiar look passed over the doctor's face as he replied: "Yes, in a way. I used to be chore-boy in the chemical lab when he was in college. But I wasn't his sort."
Helen recollected Jackson's exclamation when she had told him of her first visit with Venetia to the doctor's office. "That scrub!" Jackson had commented, simply and finally.
There was an awkward pause, which Venetia broke by saying, "I can take Pete, can't I?"
"I suppose he's well enough," Coburn answered reluctantly. It was plain that he would like to have some excuse to put off Pete's departure. The bit of friendship with the two women, which fate had tossed him, was too precious to part with easily. He picked the dog up brusquely, saying: "Pete, you are getting skinny. I guess it's time for you to go back to the good living you're used to. Don't you be getting into another mix-up, though, or there won't be enough dog left to patch."
Pete licked his hand in a puppyish way, as Coburn carried him to the carriage and placed him carefully on the seat between Venetia and Helen.
"Won't you come to see us?" Helen asked, as they shook hands. The queer look came back to the doctor's face.
"No," he said brusquely, "I guess not. I hope to see you again, though."
"Why do you suppose he said that?" Venetia inquired quickly when they had started.
Helen blushed, as she answered slowly, "Perhaps he doesn't like my husband."
"Don't you think he's the most interesting man you ever saw?" the girl exclaimed breathlessly. "At first he frightened me; he said such queer things—things people don't say, just think them. But I like it now. I mean to see a lot more of him somehow."
"Will you get your mother to ask him to Forest Park?" Helen asked mischievously.
"Just imagine it! Wouldn't Mrs. Phillips be nice to him? They'd have a fight the first thing, if she even looked at him. But I am sure he's the most interesting man I ever met. He's lots nicer than Stanwood's friends. They are always trying to hold your hand and wanting to kiss you. It makes up for conversation."
"Venetia!" the older woman protested.
"Well, they do! And when I told mamma once, she said that a girl could always manage men if she wanted to."
As-the carriage stopped at the apartment house where the Harts lived, the girl impulsively kissed the older woman.
"I'm so glad I know you—and the doctor, too!"
That evening when Helen sat down to dinner with her husband in their little apartment, she recounted the events of her day, among them the visit to Dr. Coburn's office. Jackson, who had brought home with him a roll of plans to work at in the evening, remarked casually: "Isn't Venetia going there a good deal? Her mother won't like that sort of intimacy."
"I don't think there is any harm in it. Dr. Coburn interests her, opens her eyes to things she never realized before. I think he must have a good deal of ability, though he is boastful and rough."
"That kind usually are conceited," the architect replied indifferently. "He had better show a little of his ability in getting some paying patients. He can't be doing much, judging by the boots and hat he had on the last time I saw him."
"No, he is very poor," Helen admitted. She disliked to have her husband judge any man by his "boots and hat." These necessary articles of clothing seemed to her rather accidental aspects of humanity in the confusing fortunes of life.
"Would you mind very much," she ventured after a time, "calling on him? I want to ask him to dine with us some Sunday. I want to have Venetia, and Pete, too."
Jackson looked at his wife in surprise.
"If you wish it, of course. I don't see much point to it. Why do you want him? He isn't our kind."
She was becoming gradually conscious that her husband liked only the society of his kind—those people who had the same tastes and habits, whose views and pleasures he shared. When she thought of it, she realized that they had rapidly severed themselves from any other kind during the first few months of their married life. She had given up going to the River settlement before her marriage, partly because Jackson disapproved of settlements. They were "socialistic" and "cranky," and business men told him that they helped to stir up that discontent among the laboring classes which was so rife in Chicago. They encouraged the unions, and with people of his class trade-unionism was considered to be the next worst thing to anarchy. So in the desire to have no shadow of difference between them, Helen had given up her classes in the settlement and rarely returned to the friends she had made in that part of the city.
There was growing in her, however, something almost of revolt against this attitude on the part of her husband. There came back to her these days with singular insistence some earnest words which once had thrilled her: "We are bound to one another inseparably in this life of ours; we make a society that is a composite. Whatever we may do to weaken the sense of that common bond disintegrates society. Whatever we can do to deepen the sense of that bond makes life stronger, better for all!" This idea fed an inner hunger of spirit which her husband had not appeased. For she had in large measure that rare instinct for democracy, the love of being like others in joy and sorrow.
Jackson believed in charitable effort, and had urged her to accept an invitation to join the committee of women who managed St. Isidore's hospital. It was almost a fashionable club, this committee, and it was a flattering thing for a young married woman to be made a member of it. The hospital was under the special patronage of the Crawfords and the Fosters and other well-known people in the city. And when after a visit to the bookbinder's sickly wife, she wished to do something for Hussey, Jackson interested himself in her effort to get together a class of young married women to learn the art of bookbinding, which happened to be a part of the current enthusiasm over craftsmanship. This class met at various houses once a week and spent a morning trying to bind paper-covered literature under Hussey's direction. Jackson, who was a bit of a dilettante by nature, was much interested in the work of the class. He would like to have Helen try her hand in metal-work or design jewellery or wall-paper or model. Once he talked to the class on the minor arts, talked with great enthusiasm and charm, exhorting these young women of the leisure class to cultivate intensively some one artistic interest in life.
But Helen, who hoped soon to have a child, found these things more or less trivial.