"Some one may call," she said, "and we must be ready to receive them," but at that season of the year, when roads were muddy, there was but little social visiting in the country.
So, consumed with ennui, Zell listened to the pounding of the carpenters overhead, and watched the dogged old plowman go round the small garden till it was all scratched over, and then the whole crazy mechanism rattled off to parts unknown. The two servants did not leave her even the recourse of housework, of which she was naturally fond.
Edith went straight to Mr. Hard, and was so provoked that she scarcely avoided the puddles in her determined haste.
Mr. Hard looked out upon his customers with, cold, hard little eyes that changed their expression only in growing more cold and hard. The rest of his person seemed all bows, smirks, and smiles, but it was noticed that these latter diminished and his eyes grew harder as he wished to remind some lagging patron that his little account needed settling. This thrifty citizen of Pushton was soon in polite attendance on Edith, but was rather taken back when she asked sharply what he meant by sending such a good-for-nothing man to plow her garden.
"Well, Miss Allen," he said, his eyes growing harder but his manner more polite, "old Gideon does such little jobs around, and I thought he was just the one."
"Does he plow your garden?" asked Edith abruptly.
"I keep a gardener," said Mr. Hard with some dignity.
"I believe it would pay me to do the same," said Edith, "if I could find one on whom I could depend. The man you sent was very impudent. I told him the work didn't suit me—that he didn't plow half deep enough, and that he must leave. But he just kept right on, saying you sent him, and he would plow it, and he injured my flower borders besides. Therefore he must look to you for payment." (Mr. Hard's eyes grew very hard at this.) "Because I am a woman I am not going to be imposed upon. Now do you know of a man who can really plow my garden? If not, I must look elsewhere. I had hoped when you took our business you would have some interest in seeing that we were well served."
Mr. Hard, with eyes like two flint pebbles, made a low bow and said with impressive dignity:
"It is my purpose to do so. There is Mr. Skinner, he does plowing."
"I don't want Mr. Skinner," said Edith impatiently, "I don't like his name in reference to plowing."
"Oh! ah! excellent reason; very good, Miss Allen. Well, there's Mr. McTrump, a Scotchman, who has a small greenhouse and nursery, he looks after gardens for some people."
"I will go and see him," said Edith, taking his address.
As she plodded off to find his place, she sighed, "Oh, dear! it's dreadful to have no men in the family. That Arden Lacey might have helped me so much, if mother was not so particular. I fear we are all on the wrong track, throwing away substantial and present good for uncertainties."
Mr. McTrump was a little man with a heavy sandy beard and such bushy eyebrows and hair that he reminded Edith of a Scotch terrier. But her first glance around convinced her that he was a gardener. Neatness, order, thrift, impressed her the moment she opened his gate, and she perceived that he was already quite advanced in his spring work. Smooth seed-sown beds were emerging from winter's chaos. Crocuses and hyacinths were in bloom, tulips were budding, and on a sunny slope in the distance she saw long green rows of what seemed some growing crop. She determined if possible to make this man her ally, or by stratagem to gain his secret of success.
The little man stood in the door of his greenhouse with a transplanting trowel in his hand. He was dressed in clay-colored nankeen, and could get down in the dirt without seeming to get dirty. His small eyes twinkled shrewdly, but not unkindly, as she advanced toward him. He was fond of flowers, and she looked like one herself that spring morning.
"I was directed to call upon you," she said, with conciliatory politeness, "understanding that you sometimes assist people with their gardens."
"Weel, noo and then I do, but I canna give mooch time with a' my ain work."
"But you would help a lady who has no one else to help her, wouldn't you?" said Edith sweetly.
Old Malcom was not to be caught with a sugar-plum, so he said with a little Scotch caution:
"I canna vera weel say till I hear mair aboot it."
Edith told him how she was situated, and in view of her perplexity and trouble, her voice had a little appealing pathos in it. Malcom's eyes twinkled more and more kindly, and as he explained afterward to his wife, "Her face was sae like a pink hyacinth beent doon by the storm and a wantin' proppin' oop," that by the time she was done he was ready to accede to her wishes.
"Weel," said he, "I canna refuse a blithe young leddy like yoursel, but ye must let me have my ain way."
Edith was inclined to demur at this, for she had been reading up and had many plans and theories to carry out. But she concluded to accept the condition, thinking that with her feminine tact she would have her own way after all. She did not realize that she was dealing with a Scotchman.
"I'll send ye a mon as will plow the garden, and not scratch it, the morrow, God willin'," for Mr. McTrump was a very pious man, his only fault being that he would take a drop too much occasionally.
"May I stay here a while and watch you work, and look at things?" asked Edith. "I don't want to go back till that hateful old fellow has done his mischief and is gone."
"Why not?" said Malcom, "an ye don't tech anything. The woman folk from the village as come here do pick and pull much awry."
"I promise you I will be good," said Edith eagerly.
"That's mair than ony on us can say of oursel," said Malcom, showing the doctrinal bias of his mind, "but I ken fra' yer bonnie face ye mean weel."
"Oh, Mr. McTrump, that is the first compliment I have received inPushton," laughed Edith.
"I'm a thinkin' it'll not be the last. But I hope ye mind the Scripter where it says, 'We do all fade as a flower,' and ye will not be puffed oop."
But Edith, far more intent on horticultural than on scriptural knowledge, asked quickly:
"What were you going to set out with that trowel?"
"A new strawberry-bed. I ha' more plants the spring than I can sell, sae I thought to put oot a new bed, though I ha' a good mony."
"I am so glad. I wish to set out a large bed and can get the plants of you."
"How mony do ye want?" said Malcom, with a quick eye to business.
"I shall leave that to you when you see my ground. Now see how I trust you, Mr. McTrump."
"An' ye'll not lose by it, though I would na like a' my coostomers to put me sae strictly on my honesty."
Edith spent the next hour in looking around the garden and greenhouses and watching the old man put out his plants.
"These plants are to be cooltivated after the hill seestem," he said. "They are to stand one foot apart in the row, and the rows two feet apart, and not a rooner or weed to grow on or near them, and it would do your bright eyes good to see the great red berries they'll bear."
"Shall I raise mine that way?" said Edith.
"Weel, ye might soom, but the narrow row coolture will be best for ye,I'm thinkin'."
"What's that?"
"Weel, just let the plants run togither and make a thick close row a foot wide, an' two feet between the rows. That'll be the easiest for ye, but I'll show ye."
"I'm so glad I found you out!" said Edith, heartily; "and if you will let me, I want to come here often and see how you do everything, for to tell you the truth, between ourselves, we are poor, and may have to earn our living out of the garden, or some other way, and I would rather do it out of the garden."
"Weel, noo, ye're a canny lass to coom and filch all old Malcom's secrets to set oop opposition to him. But then sin' ye do it sae openly I'll tell ye all I know. The big wourld ought to be wide enough for a bonnie lassie like yoursel to ha' a chance in it, and though I'm a little mon, I would na be sae mean a one as to hinder ye. Mairover the gardener's craft be a gentle one, and I see na reason why, if a white lily like yoursel must toil and spin, it should na be oot in God's sunshine, where the flowers bloom, instead o' pricking the bluid oot o' yer body, and the hope oot o' yer heart, wi' the needle's point, as I ha' seen sae mony o' my ain coontry lassies do. Gude-by, and may the roses in yer cheeks bloom a' the year round."
Edith felt as if his last words were a blessing, and started with her heart cheered and hopeful; and yet beyond her garden, with its spring promise, its summer and autumn possibilities, there was little inspiring or hopeful in her new home.
In accordance with their mother's policy, they were waiting for something to turn up—waiting, in utter uncertainty, and with dubious prospects, to achieve by marriage the security and competence which they must not work for, or they would utterly lose caste in the old social world in which they had lived.
Be not too hasty in condemning Mrs. Allen, my reader, for you may, at the same time, condemn yourself. Have you no part in sustaining that public sentiment which turns the cold shoulder of society toward the woman who works? Many are growing rich every year, but more are growing poor. What does the "best society," in the world's estimation, say to the daughters in these families?
"Keep your little hands white, my dears, as long as you can, because as soon as the traces of toil are seen on them you become a working-woman, and our daughters can't associate with you, and our sons can't think of you, that is for wives. No other than little and white hands can enter our heaven."
So multitudes struggle to keep their hands white, though thereby the risk that their souls will become stained and black increases daily. A host of fair girls find their way every year to darker stains than ever labor left, because they know how coldly society will ignore them the moment they enlist in the army of honest workers. But you, respectable men and women in your safe pleasant homes, to the extent that you hold and sustain this false sentiment, to the extent that you make the paths of labor hard and thorny, and darken them from the approving smile of the world, you are guilty of these girls' ruin.
Christian matron, with your husband one of the pillars of church and state, do you shrink with disgust from that poor creature who comes flaunting down Broadway? None but the white-handed enter your parlors, and the men (?) who are hunting such poor girls to perdition will sit on the sofa with your daughters this evening. Be not too confident. Your child, or one in whom your blood flows at a little later remove, may stand just where honor to toil would save, but the practical dishonoring of it, which you sustain, eventually blot out the light of earth and heaven.
Mrs. Allen knew that even if her daughters commenced teaching, which, with all the thousands spent on their education, they were incapable of doing, their old sphere on Fifth Avenue would be as unapproachable as the pearly gates, between which and the lost a "great gulf is fixed."
But Mrs. Allen knew also of a very respectable way, having the full approval of society, by which they might regain their place in the heaven from which they had fallen. Besides it was such a simple way, requiring no labor whatever, though a little scheming perhaps, no amount of brains or culture worth mentioning, no heart or love, and least of all a noble nature. A woman may sell herself, or if of a waxy disposition, having little force, may be sold at the altar to a man who will give wealth and luxury in return. This, society, in full dress, smiles upon, and civil law and sacred ceremony sanction.
With the forefinger of her right hand resting impressively on the palm of her left, Mrs. Allen had indicated this back door into the paradise, the gates of which were guarded against poor working-women by the flaming sword of public opinion, turning every way.
And the girls were waiting yawningly, wearily, as the long unoccupied days passed. Laura's cheek grew paler than even her delicate style of beauty demanded. She seemed not only a hot-house plant, but a sickly one. The light was fading from her eye as well as the color from her cheek, and all vigor vanishing from her languid soul and body. The resemblance to her mother grew more striking daily. She was a melancholy result of that artificial luxurious life by which the whole nature is so enervated that there seems no stamina left to resist the first cold blast of adversity. Instead of being like a well-rooted hardy native of the soil she seemed a tender exotic that would wither even in the honest sunlight. As a gardener would say, she needed "hardening off." This would require the bracing of principle and the development of work. But Mrs. Allen could not lead the way to the former, and the latter she forbade, so poor Laura grew more sickly and morbid every day of her weary idle waiting.
Mrs. Allen's policy bore even more heavily on Zell. We have all thought something perhaps of the cruelty of imprisoning a vigorous young person, abounding in animal life and spirits, in a narrow cell, which forbids all action and stifles hope. It gives the unhappy victim the sensation of being buried alive. There comes at last to be one passionate desire to get out and away. Impulsive, restless, excitable Zell, with every vein filled with hot young blood, was shut out from what seemed to her the world, and no other world of activity was shown to her. Her hands were tied by her mother's policy, and she sat moping and chafing like a chained captive, waiting till Mr. Van Dam should come and deliver her from as vile durance as was ever suffered in the moss-grown castles of the old world. The hope of his coming was all that sustained her. Her sad situation was the result of acting on a false view of life from beginning to end. Any true parent would have shuddered at the thought of a daughter marrying such a man as Van Dam, but Zell was forbidden to do one useful thing, lest it should mar her chance of union with this resume of all vice and uncleanness; and though she had heard the many reports of his evil life, her moral sense was so perverted that he seemed a lion rather than a reptile to her. It is true, she looked upon him only in the light of her future husband, but that she did not shrink from any relationship with such a man shows how false and defective her education had been.
Edith had employment for mind and hand, therefore she was happier and safer than either of her sisters. Malcom had her garden thoroughly plowed, and helped her plant it. He gave her many flower roots and sold others at very low prices. In the lower part of the garden, where the ground was rather heavy and moist, he put out a large number of raspberries; and along a stone fence, where weeds and bushes had been usurping the ground, he planted two or three varieties of blackcaps. He also lined another fence with Kittatinny blackberries. There were already many currants and gooseberries on the place. These he trimmed, and put in cuttings for new bushes. He pruned the grapevines also somewhat, but not to any great extent, on account of the lateness of the season, meaning to get them into shape by summer cutting. The orchard also was made to look clean and trim, with the dead wood and interfering branches cut away. Edith watched these operations with the deepest interest, and when she could, without danger of being observed from the road, assisted, though in a very dainty, amateur way. But Malcom did not aim to put in as many hours as possible, but seemed to do everything with a sleight of hand that made his visits appear too brief, even though she had to pay for them. As a refuge from long idle hours, she would often go up to Malcom's little place, and watch him and his assistant as they deftly dealt with nature in accordance with her moods, making the most of the soil, sunlight, and rain. Thus Malcom came to take a great interest in her, and shrewd Edith was not slow in fostering so useful a friendship. But in spite of all this, there were many rainy idle days that hung like lead upon her hands, and upon these especially, it seemed impossible to carry out her purpose to be gentle and forbearing, and it often occurred that the dull apathy of the household was changed into positive pain by sharp words and angry retorts that should never have been spoken.
About the last Sabbath of April, Mrs. Allen sent for a carriage and was driven with her daughters to the most fashionable church of Pushton. Marshalled by the sexton, they rustled in toilets more suitable for one of the gorgeous temples of Fifth Avenue than for even the most ambitious of country churches. Mrs. Allen hoped to make a profound impression on the country people, and by this one dress parade to secure standing and cordial recognition among the foremost families. But she overshot the mark. The failure of Mr. Allen was known. The costly mourning suits and the little house did not accord, the solid, sensible people were unfavorably impressed, and those of fashionable and aristocratic tendencies felt that investigation was needed before the strangers could be admitted within their exclusive circles. So, though it was not a Methodist church that they attended, the Allens were put on longer probation by all classes, when if they had appeared in a simple unassuming manner, rating themselves at their true worth and position, many would have been inclined to take them by the hand.
One morning, a month after the Allens had gone into poverty's exile, Gus Elliot lounged into Mr. Van Dam's luxurious apartments. There was everything around him to gratify the eye of sense, that is, such sense as Gus Elliot had cultivated, though an angel might have hidden his face. We will not describe these rooms—we had better not. It is sufficient to say that in their decorations, pictures, bacchanalian ornaments, and general suggestion, they were a reflex of Mr. Van Dam's character, in the more refined and aesthetic phase which he presented to society. Indeed, in the name of art, whose mantle, if at times rather flimsy, is broader than that of charity, not a few would have admired the exhibitions of Mr. Van Dam's taste.
But concerning Gus Elliot, no doubt exists in our mind. The atmosphere of Mr. Van Dam's room was entirely adapted to his chosen direction of development. He was a young man of leisure and fashion, and was therefore what even the fashionable would be horrified at their daughters ever becoming. This nice distinction between son and daughter does not result well. It leaves men in the midst of society unbranded as vile, unmarked so that good women may shrink in disgust from them. It gives them a chance to prey upon the weak, as Mr. Van Dam purposed to do, and as he intended to induce Gus Elliot to do, and as multitudes of exquisitely dressed scoundrels are doing daily.
If Mr. and Mrs. Allen had done their duty as parents, they would have kept the wolf (I beg the wolf's pardon) the jackal, Mr. Van Dam, with his thin disguise of society polish, from entering their fold. Gus Elliot was one of those mean curs that never lead, and could always be drawn into any evil that satisfied the one question of his life, "Will it give me whatIwant?"
Gus was such an exquisite that the smell of garlic made him ill, and the sight of blood made him faint, and the thought of coarse working hands was an abomination, but in worse than idleness he could see his old father wearing himself out, he could get "gentlemanly drunk," and commit any wrong in vogue among the fast young men with whom he associated. And now Mephistopheles Van Dam easily induces him to seek to drag down beautiful Edith Allen, the woman he had meant to marry, to a life compared with which the city gutters are cleanly.
Van Dam in slippers and silken robe was smoking his meerschaum after a late breakfast and reading a French novel.
"What is the matter?" he said, noting Gus's expression of ennui and discontent.
"There is not another girl left in the city to be mentioned the same day with Edith Allen," said Gus, with the pettishness of a child from whom something had been taken.
"Well, spooney, what are you going to do about it?" asked Mr. Van Dam coolly.
"What is there to do about it? You know well enough that I can't afford to marry her. I suppose it's the best thing for me that she has gone off to the backwoods somewhere, for while she was here I could not help seeing her, and after all it was only an aggravation."
"I can't afford to marry Zell," replied Van Dam, "but I am going up to see her to-morrow. After being out there by themselves for a month, I think they will be glad to see some one from the civilized world." The most honest thing about Van Dam was his sincere commiseration for those compelled to live in quiet country places, without experience in the highly spiced pleasures and excitements of the metropolis. In his mind they were associated with oxen—innocent, rural, and heavy, these terms being almost synonymous to him, and suggestive of such a forlorn tame condition that it seemed only vegetating, not living. Mr. Van Dam believed in a life, like his favorite dishes, that abounded in cayenne. Zell's letters had confirmed this opinion, and he saw that she was half desperate with ennui and disgust at their loneliness.
"I imagine we have stayed away long enough," he continued. "They have had sufficient of the miseries of mud, rain, and exile, not to be very nice about the conditions of return to old haunts and life. Of course I can't afford to marry Zell any more than you can Edith, but for all that I expect to have her here with me before many months pass, and perhaps weeks."
"Look here, Van Dam, you are going too far. Remember how high theAllens once stood in society," said Gus, a little startled.
"'Once stood;' where do they stand now? Who in society has lifted, or will lift a finger for them, and they seem to have no near relatives to stand by them. I tell you they are at our mercy. Luxury is a necessity, and yet they are not able to earn their bare bread.
"Let me inform you," he continued, speaking with the confidence of a hunter, who from long experience knows just where the game is most easily captured, "that there is no class more helpless than the very rich when reduced to sudden poverty. They are usually too proud to work, in the first place, and in the second, they don't know how to do anything. What does a fashionable education fit a girl for, I would like to know, if, as often occurs, she has to make her own way in the world?—a smattering of everything, mistress of nothing."
"Well, Van Dam," said Gus, "according to your showing, it fits them for little schemes like the one you are broaching."
"Precisely. Girls who know how to work and who are accustomed to it, will snap their fingers in your face, and tell you they can take care of themselves, but the class to which the Allens belong, unless kept up by some rich relations, are soon almost desperate from want. I have kept up a correspondence with Zell. They seem to have no near relatives or friends who are doing much for them. They are doing nothing for themselves, save spend what little there is left, and their monotonous country life has half-murdered them already. So I conclude I have waited long enough and will go up to-morrow. Instead of pouting like a spoiled child over your lost Edith, you had better go up and get her. It may take a little time and management. Of course they must be made to think we intend to marry them, but if they once elope with us, we can find a priest at our leisure."
"I will go up to-morrow with you any way," said Gus, who, like so many others, never made a square bargain with the devil, but was easily "led captive" from one wrong and villany to another.
It was the last day of April—one on which the rawness and harshness of early spring were melting into the mildness of May. The buds on the trees had perceptibly swollen. The flowering maple was still aflame, the sweet centre of attraction to innumerable bees, the hum of whose industry rose and fell on the languid breeze. The grass had the delicate green and exquisite odor belonging to its first growth, and was rapidly turning the brown, withered sward of winter into emerald. The sun shone through a slight haze, but shone warmly. The birds had opened the day with full orchestra, but at noon there was little more than chirp and twitter, they seeming to feel something of Edith's languor, as she leaned on the railing of the porch, and watched for the coming of Malcom. She sighed as she looked at the bare brown earth of the large space that she purposed for strawberries, and work there and everywhere seemed repulsive. The sudden heat was enervating and gave her the feeling of luxurious languor that she longed to enjoy with a sense of security and freedom from care. But even as her eyelids drooped with momentary drowsiness, there was a consciousness, like a dull, half-recognized pain, of insecurity, of impending trouble and danger, and of a need for exertion that would lead to something more certain than anything her mother's policy promised.
She was startled from her heaviness by the sharp click of the gate latch, and Malcom entered with two large baskets of strawberry-plants. He had said to her:
"Wait a bit. The plants will do weel, put oot the last o' the moonth. An ye wait I'll gie ye the plants I ha' left cover and canna sell the season. But dinna be troobled, I'll keep it enoof for ye ony way."
By this means Edith obtained half her plants without cost, save forMalcom's labor of transplanting them.
The weather had little influence on Malcom's wiry frame, and his spirit of energetic, cheerful industry was contagious. Once aroused and interested, Edith lost all sense of time, and the afternoon passed happily away.
At her request Malcom had brought her a pair of pruning nippers, such as she had seen him use, and she kept up a delicate show of work, trimming the rose-bushes and shrubs, while she watched him. She could not bring her mind to anything that looked like real work as yet, but she had a feeling that it must come. She saw that it would help Malcom very much if she went before and dropped the plants for him, but some one might see her, and speak of her doing useful work. The aristocratically inclined in Pushton would frown on the young lady so employed, but she could snip at roses and twine vines, and that would look pretty and rural from the road.
But it so happened that the one who caught a glimpse of her spring-day beauty, and saw the pretty rural scene she crowned, was not the critical occupant of some family carriage; for when, while near the road, she was reaching up to clip off the topmost spray of a bush, her attention was drawn by the rattle of a wagon, and in this picturesque attitude her eyes met those of Arden Lacey. The sudden remembrance of the unkind return made to him, and the fact that she had therefore dreaded meeting him, caused her to blush deeply. Her feminine quickness caught his expression, a timid questioning look, that seemed to ask if she would act the part of the others. Edith was a society and city girl, and her confusion lasted but a second. Policy whispered, "You can still keep him as a useful friend, though you must keep him at a distance, and you may need him." Some sense of gratitude and of the wrong done him and his also mingled with these thoughts, passing with the marvellous rapidity with which a lady's mind acts in social emergencies. She also remembered that they were alone, and that none of the Pushton notables could see that she was acquainted with the "drunken Laceys." Therefore before the diffident Arden could turn away, she bowed and smiled to him in a genial, conciliatory manner. His face brightened into instant sunshine, and to her surprise he lifted his old weather-stained felt hat like a gentleman. Though he had received no lessons in etiquette, he was inclined to be a little courtly and stately in manner, when he noticed a lady at all, from unconscious imitation of the high-bred characters in the romances he read. He said to himself in glad exultation:
"She is different from the rest. She is as divinely good as she is divinely beautiful," and away he rattled toward Pushton as happy as if his old box wagon were a golden chariot, and he a caliph of Arabian story on whom had just shone the lustrous eyes of the Queen of the East. Then as the tumult in his mind subsided, questioning thoughts as to the cause of her blush came trooping through his mind, and at once there arose a long vista of airy castles tipped with hope as with sunlight Poor Arden! What a wild, uncurbed imagination had mastered his morbid nature, as he lived a hermit's life among the practical people of Pushton! If he had known that Edith, had she seen him in the village, would have crossed the street rather than have met or recognized him, it would have plunged him into still bitterer misanthropy. She and his mother only stood between him and utter contempt and hatred of his kind, as they existed in reality, and not in his books and dreams.
She forgot all about him before his wagon turned the corner of the road, and chatted away to Malcom, questioning and nipping with increasing zest. As the day grew cooler, her spirits rose under the best of all stimulants, agreeable occupation. The birds ceased at last their nest-building, and from orchard and grove came many an inspiring song. Edith listened with keen enjoyment, and country life and work looked no longer as they had done in the sultry noon. She saw with deep satisfaction the long rows of strawberry-vines increasing under Malcom's labors. In the still humid air the plants scarcely wilted and stood up with the bright look of those well started in life.
As evening approached, and no carriage of note had passed, Edith ventured to get her transplanting trowel, doff her gloves, and commence dividing her flower roots, that she might put them elsewhere. She became so interested in her work that she was positively happy, and soft-hearted Malcom, with his eye for the beauties of nature, was getting his rows crooked, because of so many admiring glances toward her as she went to and fro.
The sun was low in the west and shone in crimson through the soft haze. But the color in her cheeks was richer as she rose from the ground, her little right hand lost in the scraggly earth-covered roots of some hardy phlox, and turned to meet exquisite Gus Elliot, dressed with finished care, his hands incased in immaculate gloves. Her broad-rimmed hat was pushed back, her dress looped up, and she made a picture in the evening glow that would have driven a true artist half wild with admiration; but poor Gus was quite shocked. The idea of Edith Allen, the girl he had meant to marry, grubbing in the dirt and soiling her hands in that style! It was his impression that only Dutch women worked in a garden; and for all he knew of its products she might be setting out a potato plant. Quick Edith caught his expression, and while she crimsoned with vexation at her plight, felt a new and sudden sense of contempt for the semblance of a man before her.
But with the readiness of a society girl she smoothed her way out of the dilemma, saying with vivacity:
"Why, Mr. Elliot, where did you drop from? You have surprised me among my flowers, you see."
"Indeed, Miss Edith," said Gus, in rather unhappily phrased gallantry, "to see you thus employed makes me feel as if we both had dropped into some new and strange sphere. You seem the lovely shepherdess of this rural scene, but where is your flock?"
Shrewd Malcom, near by, watched this scene as the terrier he resembled might have done, and took instant and instinctive dislike to the new-comer. With a contemptuous sniff he thought to himself, "There's mateerial enoof in ye for so mooch toward a flock as a calf and a donkey."
"A truce to your lame compliments," she said, concealing her vexation under badinage. "I do not live by hook and crook yet, whatever I may come to, and I remember that you only appreciate artificial flowers made by pretty shop girls, and these are not in the country. But come in. Mother and my sisters will be glad to see you."
Gus was not blind to her beauty, and while the idea of marriage seemed more impossible than ever, now that he had seen her hands soiled, the evil suggestion of Van Dam gained attractiveness with every glance.
Edith found Mr. Van Dam on the porch with Zell, who had welcomed him in a manner that meant much to the wily man. He saw how necessary he was to her, and how she had been living on the hope of seeing him, and the baseness of his nature was such that instead of being stirred to one noble kindly impulse toward her, he simply exulted in his power.
"Oh," said she, as with both hands she greeted him, her eyes half filling with tears, "we have been living like poor exiles in a distant land, and you seem as if just from home, bringing the best part of it with you."
"And I shall carry you back to it ere long," he whispered.
Her face grew bright and rosy with the deepest happiness she had ever know. He had never spoken so plainly before. "Edith can never taunt me again with his silence," she thought. Though sounding well enough to the ear, how false were his words! Zell was giving the best love of which her heart was capable in view of her defective education and character. In a sincere and deep affection there are great possibilities of good. Her passion, so frank and strong, in the hands of a true man, was a lever that might have lifted her to the noblest life. Van Dam sought to use it only to force her down. He purposed to cause one of God's little ones to offend.
Edith soon appeared, dressed with the taste and style of a Fifth Avenue belle of the more sensible sort, and Gus was comforted. Her picturesque natural beauty in the garden was quite lost on him, but now that he saw the familiar touches of the artificial in her general aspect, she seemed to him the peerless Edith of old. And yet his nice eye noted that even a month of absence from the fashionable centre had left her ignorant of some of the shadings off of one mode into another, and the thought passed over the polished surface of his mind (all Gus's thoughts were on the surface, there being no other accommodation for them), "Why, a year in this out-of-the-world life, and she would be only a country girl."
But all detracting thoughts of each other, all mean, vile, and deadly purposes, were hidden under smiling exteriors. Mrs. Allen was the gracious, elegant matron who would not for the world let her daughters soil their hands, but schemed to marry one to a weak apology for a man, and another to a villain out and out, and the fashionable world would cordially approve and sustain Mrs. Allen's tactics if she succeeded.
Laura brightened up more than she had done since her father's death. Anything that gave hope of return to the city, and the possibility of again meeting and withering Mr. Goulden with her scorn, was welcome.
And Edith, while she half despised Gus, found it very pleasant to meet those of her old set again, and repeat a bit of the past. The young crave companionship, and in spite of all his weakness she half liked Elliot. With youth's hopefulness she believed that he might become a man if he only would. At any rate, she half-consciously formed the reckless purpose to shut her eyes to all presentiments of coming trouble and enjoy the evening to the utmost.
Hannibal was enjoined to get up as fine a supper as possible, regardless of cost, with Mrs. Allen's maid to assist.
In the long purple twilight, Edith and Zell, on the arms of their pseudo lovers, strolled up and down the paths of the little garden and dooryard. As Edith and Gus were passing along the walk that skirted the road, she heard the heavy ramble of a wagon that she knew to be Arden Lacey's. She did not look up or recognize him, but appeared so intent on what Gus was saying as to be oblivious of all else, and yet through her long lashes she glanced toward him in a rapid flash, as he sat in his rough working garb on the old board where she, on the rainy night of her advent to Pushton, had clung to his arm in the jolting wagon. Momentary as the glance was, the pained, startled expression of his face as he bent his eyes full upon her caught her attention and remained with her.
His manner and appearance secured the attention of Gus also, and with a contemptuous laugh he said loud enough for Arden to hear partially:
"That native comes from pretty far back, I imagine. He looks as if he never saw a lady and gentleman before. The idea of living like such a cabbage-head as that!"
If Gus had not been with Edith, his good clothes and good looks would have been spoiled within the next five minutes.
Edith glanced the other way and pointed to her strawberry-bed as if not noticing his remark or its object, saying:
"If you will come and see us a year from next June, I can give you a dainty treat from these plants."
"You will not be here next June," said Gus tenderly. "Do you imagine we can spare you from New York? The city has seemed dull since robbed of the light of your bright eyes."
Edith rather liked sugar-plums of such make, even from Gus, and she, as it were, held out her hand again by the rather sentimental remark:
"Absent ones are soon forgotten."
Gus, from much experience, knew how to flirt beautifully, and so with some aptness and show of feeling, replied:
"From my thoughts you are never absent."
Edith gave him a quick questioning look. What did he mean? He had avoided everything tending to commit him to a penniless girl after her father's death. Was this mere flirtation? Or had he, in absence, learned his need of her for happiness? and was he now willing to marry her even though poor?
"If he is man enough to do this, he is capable of doing more," she thought quickly, and circumstances pleaded for him. She felt so troubled about the future, so helpless and lonely, and he seemed so inseparably associated with her old bright life, that she was tempted to lean on such a swaying reed as she knew Gus to be. She did not reply, but he could see the color deepen in her cheeks even in the fading twilight, her bosom rose and fell more quickly, and her hand rested upon his arm with a more confiding pressure. What more could he ask? and he exulted.
But before he could speak again they were summoned to supper. Van Dam touched Gus's elbow as they passed in and whispered:
"Don't be precipitate. Say nothing definite to-night. I gather from Zell that a little more of their country purgatory will render them wholly desperate."
Edith noticed the momentary detention and whispering, and the thought that there was some understanding between the two occurred to her. For some undefined reason she was always inclined to be suspicious and on the alert when Mr. Van Dam was present. And yet it was but a passing thought, soon forgotten in the enjoyment of the evening, after so long and dull an experience. Zell was radiant, and there was a glimmer of color in Laura's pale cheeks.
After supper they sat down to cards. The decanter was placed on the side table, and heavy inroads were made on Mrs. Allen's limited stock of wine, for the gentlemen, feeling that they were off on a lark, were little inclined to self-control. They also insisted on the ladies drinking health with them, which foolish Zell, and more foolish Mrs. Allen were too ready to do, and for the first time since their coming the little cottage resounded with laughter that was too loud and frequent to be inspired by happiness only.
If guardian angels watched there, as we believe they do everywhere, they may well have veiled their faces in sadness and shame.
But the face of poor innocent Hannibal shone with delight, and nodding his head toward Mr. Allen's maid with the complacency of a prophet who saw his predictions fulfilled, he said:
"I told you my young ladies wasn't gwine to stay long in Bushtown" (asHannibal persisted in calling the place).
To Arden Lacey, the sight of Edith listening with glowing cheeks and intent manner to a stranger with her hand within his arm—a stranger too that seemed the embodiment of that conventionality of the world which he despised and hated, was a vision that pierced like a sword. And then Gus's contemptuous words and Edith's non-recognition, though he tried to believe she had not seen him, were like vitriol to a wound. At first there was a mad impulse of anger toward Elliot, and, as we have intimated, only Edith's presence prevented Arden from demanding instant apology. He knew enough of his fiery nature to feel that he must get away as fast as possible, or he might forever disgrace himself in Edith's eyes.
As he rode home his mind was in a sad chaos. He was conscious that his airy castles were falling about him with a crash, which, though unheard by all the world, shook his soul to the centre.
Too utterly miserable to face his mother, loathing the thought of food, he put up his horses and rushed out into the night.
In his first impulse he vowed never to look toward Edith again, but, before two hours of fruitless wandering had passed, a fascination drew him toward Edith's cottage, only to hear that detested voice again, only to hear even Edith's laugh ring out too loud and reckless to come from the lips of the exquisite ideal of his dreams. Though the others had spoken in thunder tones, he would have had ears for these two voices only. He rushed away from the spot, as one might from some torturing vision, exclaiming:
"The real world is a worse mockery than the one of my dreams. Would to heaven I had never been born!"
The gentlemen agreed to meet the ladies the next day at church. Mrs. Allen insisted upon it, as she wished to show the natives of Pushton that they were visited by people of style from the city. As yet they had not received many calls, and those venturing had come in a reconnoitring kind of way. She knew so little of solid country people as to suppose that two young men, like Gus Elliot and Van Dam, would make a favorable impression. The latter, with a shrug and grimace at Zell, which she, poor child, thought funny, promised to do so, and then they took leave with great cordiality.
So they were ready to hand the Allens out of their carriage the next morning, and were, with the ladies, who were dressed even more elaborately than on the previous Sabbath, shown to a prominent pew, the centre of many admiring eyes, as they supposed. But where one admired, ten criticised. The summer hotel at Pushton had brought New York too near and made it too familiar for Mrs. Allen's tactics. Visits to town were easily made and frequent, and by brief diversions of their attention from the service, the good church people soon satisfied themselves that the young men belonged to the bold fast type, an impression strengthened by the parties themselves, who had devotion only for Zell and Edith, and a bold stare for any pretty girl that caught their eyes.
After church they parted with the understanding that the gentlemen should come out toward night and spend the evening.
Mr. Van Dam and Gus Elliot dined at the village hotel, having ordered the best dinner that the landlord was capable of serving, and a couple of bottles of wine. Over this they became so exhilarated as to attract a good deal of attention. A village tavern is always haunted by idle clerks, and a motley crowd of gossips, on the Sabbath, and to these the irruption of two young bloods from the city was a slight break in the monotony of their slow shuffling jog toward perdition; and when the fine gentlemen began to get drunk and noisy it was really quite interesting. A group gathered round the bar, and through the open door could see into the dining-room. Soon with unsteady step, Van Dam and Elliot joined them, the latter brandishing an empty bottle, and calling in a thick loud voice:
"Here landlord (hic) open a bottle (hic) of wine, for these poor (hic) suckers, (hic) I don't suppose (hic) they ever tasted (hic) anything better than corn-whiskey, (hic) But I'll moisten (hic) their gullets to-day (hic) with a gentleman's drink."
The crowd was mean enough, as the loafers about a tavern usually are, to give a faint cheer at the prospect of a treat, even though accompanied by words equivalent to a kick. But one big raw-boned fellow, who looked equal to any amount of corn-whiskey or anything else, could not swallow Gus's insolence, and stepped up saying:
"Look here, Cap'n, I'm ready enough to drink with a chap when he asks me like a gentleman, but I feel more like puttin' a head on you than drinkin' with yer."
Gus had the false courage of wine and prided himself on his boxing. In the headlong fury of drunkenness he flung the bottle at the man's head, just grazing it, and sprang toward him, but stumbled and fell. The man, with a certain rude sense of chivalry, waited for him to get up, but the mean loafers who had cheered were about to manifest their change of sentiment toward Gus by kicking him in his prostrate condition. Van Dam, who also had drunk too much to be his cool careful self, now drew a pistol, and with a savage volley of oaths swore he would shoot the first man who touched his friend. Then, helping Gus up, he carried him off to a private room, and with the skill of an old experienced hand set about righting himself and Elliot, so that they might be in a presentable condition for their visit at the Allens'.
"Curse it all, Gus, why can you not keep within bounds? If this gets to the girls' ears it may spoil everything."
By five o'clock Gus had so far recovered as to venture to drive to the Allens', and the fresh air restored him rapidly. Before leaving, the landlord said to Van Dam:
"You had better stay out there all night. From what I hear the boys are going to lay for you when you come home to-night. I don't want any rows connected with my house. I'd rather you wouldn't come back."
Van Dam muttered an oath, and told the driver to go on.
As a matter of course they were received very cordially. Gus was quite himself again. He only seemed a little more inclined than usual to be sentimental and in high spirits.
They walked again in the twilight through the garden and under the budding trees of the orchard. Gus assumed a caressing tone and manner, which Edith half received and half resented. She felt that she did not know her own mind and did not understand him altogether, and so she took a diplomatic middle course that would leave her free to go forward or retreat. Zell, under the influence of Mr. Van Dam's flattering manner, walked in a beautiful but lurid dream. At last they all gathered in the parlor and chatted and laughed over old times.
On this Sabbath evening one of the officers of the church, seeing that the Allens had twice worshipped with them, felt that perhaps he ought to call and give them some encouragement. As he came up the path he was surprised at the confused sound of voices. With his hand on the door-bell he paused, and through an opening between the curtains saw the young men of whose bar-room performance he had happened to hear. Not caring to meet any of their sort he went silently away, shaking his head with ill-omened significance. Of course one good man told his wife what sort of company their new neighbors kept, and whom didn't she tell?
The evening grew late, but no carriage came from the village.
"It's very strange," said Van Dam.
"If it doesn't come you must stay all night," said Mrs. Allen graciously. "We can make you quite comfortable even if we have a little house."
Mr. Van Dam, and Gus also, were profuse in their thanks. Edith bit her lip with vexation. She felt that she and Zell were being placed in a false position since the gentlemen who to the world would seem so intimate with the family in reality held no relation to them. But no scruples of prudence occurred to thoughtless Zell. With an arch look toward her lover she said:
"I think it threatens rain, so of course you cannot go."
"Let us go out and see," he said.
In the darkness of the porch he put his arm around the unresisting girl and drew her to him, but he did not say like a true man:
"Zell, be my wife."
But poor Zell thought that was what all his attention and show of affection meant.
Edith and Gus joined them, and the latter thought also to put his regard in the form of caressing action, rather than in honest outspoken words, but she turned and said a little sharply:
"You have no right."
"Give me the right then," he whispered.
"Whether I shall ever do that I cannot say. It depends somewhat on yourself. But I cannot now and here."
The warning hand of Van Dam was reached through the darkness and touched Gus's arm.
The next morning they walked back to the village, were driven two or three miles to the nearest railway station, and took the train to the city, having promised to come again soon.
The week following their departure was an eventful one to the inmates of the little cottage, and all unknown the most unfavorable influences were at work against them. The Sunday hangers-on of a tavern have their points of contact with the better classes, and gossip is a commodity always in demand, whatever brings it to market. Therefore the scenes in the dining and bar rooms, in which Mrs. Allen's "friends" had played so prominent a part, were soon portrayed in hovel and mansion alike, with such exaggerations and distortions as a story inevitably suffers as passed along. The part acted by the young men was certainly bad enough, but rumor made it much worse. Then this stream of gossip was met by another coming from the wife of the good man who had called with the best intentions on Sunday evening, but, pained at the nature of the Allen's associations, had gone lamenting to his wife, and she had gone lamenting to the majority of the elder ladies of the church. These two streams uniting, quite a tidal wave of "I want to knows," and "painful surprises," swept over Pushton, and the Allens suffered wofully through their friends. They had already received some reconnoitering calls, and a few from people who wanted to be neighborly. But the truth was the people of Pushton had been somewhat perplexed. They did not know where to place the Allens. The fact that Mr. Allen had been a rich merchant, and lived on Fifth Avenue, counted for something. But then even the natives of Pushton knew that all kinds of people lived on Fifth Avenue, as elsewhere, and that some of the most disreputable were the richest. A clearer testimonial than that was therefore needed. Then again there was another puzzle. The fact that Mr. Allen had failed, and that they lived in a little house, indicated poverty. But their style of dressing and ordering from the store also suggested not a little property left. The humbler portion of the community doubted whether they were the style of people for them to call on, and the rumor of Rose Lacey's treatment, getting abroad in spite of Arden's injunction to the contrary, confirmed these doubts, and alienated this class. The more wealthy and fashionably inclined doubted the grounds for their calling, having by no means made up their minds whether they could take the Allens into their exclusive circle. So thus far Mrs. Allen and her daughters had given audience to a sort of middle class of skirmishers and scouts representing no one in particular save themselves, who from apenchantin that direction went out and obtained information, so that the more solid ranks behind could know what to do. In addition, as we have intimated, there were a few good kindly people who said:
"These strangers have come to live among us, and we must give them a neighborly welcome."
But there was something in their homely honest heartiness that did not suit Mrs. Allen's artificial taste, and she rather snubbed them.
"Heaven deliver us soon from Pushton," she said, "if the best people have no more air of quality than these outlandish tribes. They all look and act as if they had come out of the ark."
If the Allens had frankly and patiently accepted their poverty and misfortunes, and by close economy and some form of labor had sought to maintain an honest independence, they could soon, through this latter class, have becomeen rapportwith, not the wealthy and fashionable, but the finest people of the community; people having the refinement, intelligence, and heart to make the best friends we can possess. It might take some little time. It ought to. Social recognition and esteem should be earned. Unless strangers bring clear letters of credit, or established reputation, they must expect to be put on probation. But if they adopt a course of simple sincerity and dignity, and especially one of great prudence, they are sure to find the right sort of friends, and win the social position to which they are justly entitled. But let the finger of scandal and doubt be pointed toward them, and all having sons and daughters will stand aloof on the ground of self-protection, if nothing else. The taint of scandal, like the taint of leprosy, causes a general shrinking away.
The finger of doubt and scandal in Pushton was now most decidedly pointed toward the Allens. It was reported around:
"Their father was a Wall Street gambler who lost all in a big speculation and died suddenly or committed suicide. They belonged to the ultra-fast fashionable set in New York, and the events of the past Sabbath show that they are not the persons for self-respecting people to associate with."
Some of the rather dissipated clerks and semi-loafers of the village were inclined to make the acquaintance of such stylish handsome girls, but the Allens received the least advance from them with ineffable scorn.
Thus within the short space of a month Mrs. Allen had, by her policy, contrived to isolate her family as completely as if they had had a pestilence.
Even Mrs. Lacey and Rose were inclined to pass from indignation to contempt; for Mr. Lacey was present at the scene in the bar-room, and reported that the "two young bucks were friends of their new neighbors, the Allens, and had stayed there all Sunday night because they darsn't go back to town."
"Well," said Rose, "with all their airs, I haven't got to keeping company with that style of men yet."
"Cease to call yourself my sister if you ever do knowingly," said Arden sternly. "I don't believe Edith Allen knows the character of these men. They would not report themselves, and who is to do it?"
"Perhaps you had better," said Rose maliciously.
Arden's only answer was a dark frowning look. A severe conflict was progressing in his mind. One impulse was to regard Edith as unworthy of another thought. But his heart pleaded for her, and the thought that she was different from the rest, and capable of developing a character as beautiful as her person, grew stronger as he dwelt upon it.
"Like myself, she is related to others that drag her down," he thought, "and she seems to have no friend or brother to protect or warn her. Even if this over-dressed young fool is her lover, if she could have seen him prostrate on the bar-room floor, she would never look at him again. If she would I would never look at her."
His romantic nature became impressed with the idea that he might become in some sense her unknown knight and protector, and keep her from marrying a man that would sink to what his father was. Therefore he passed the house as often as he could in hope that there might be some opportunity of seeing her.
To poor Edith troubles thickened fast, for, as we have seen, the brunt of everything came on her. Early on the forenoon of Monday the carpenter appeared, asking with a hard, determined tone for his money, adding with satire:
"I suppose it's all right of course. People who want everything done at once must expect to pay promptly."
"Your bill is much too large—much larger than you gave us any reason to suppose it would be," said Edith.
"I've only charged you regular rates, miss, and you put me to no little inconvenience besides."
"That's not the point. It's double the amount you gave us to understand it would be, and if you should deduct the damage caused by your delay it would greatly reduce it. I do not feel willing that this bill should be paid as it stands."
"Very well then," said the man, coolly rising. "You threatened me with a lawyer; I'll let my lawyer settle with you."
"Edith," said Mrs. Allen majestically, "bring my checkbook."
"Don't pay it, mother. He can't make us pay such a bill in view of the fact that he left our roof open in the rain."
"Do as I bid you," said Mrs. Allen impressively.
"There," she said to the chuckling builder, in lofty scorn, throwing toward him a check as if it were dirt. "Now leave the presence of ladies whom you don't seem to know much about."
The man reddened and went out muttering that "he had seen quite as good ladies before."
Two days later a letter from Mrs. Allen's bank brought dismay by stating that she had overdrawn her account.
The next day there came a letter from their lawyer saying that a messenger from the bank had called upon him—that he was sorry they had spent all their money—that he could not sell the stock he held at any price now—and they had better sell their house in the country and board.
This Mrs. Allen was inclined to do, but Edith said almost fiercely:
"I won't sell it. I am bound to have some place of refuge in this hard, pitiless world. I hold the deed of this property, and we certainly can get something to eat off of it, and if we must starve, no one at least can disturb us."
"What can we do?" said Mrs. Allen, crying and wringing her hands.
"We ought to have saved our money and gone to work at something," answered Edith sternly.
"I am not able to work," whined Laura.
"I don't know how to work, and I won't starve either," cried Zell passionately. "I shall write to Mr. Van Dam this very day and tell him all about it."
"I would rather work my fingers off," retorted Edith scornfully, "than have a man come and marry me out of charity, finding me as helpless as if I were picked up off the street, and on the street we should soon be, without shelter or friends, if we sold this place."
And so the blow fell upon them, and such was the spirit with which they bore it.
The same mail brought them a long bill from Mr. Hard, accompanied with a very polite but decisive note saying that it was his custom to have a monthly settlement with his customers.
The rest of the family looked with new dismay and helplessness at this, and Edith added bitterly:
"There are half a dozen other bills also."
"What can we do?" again Mrs. Allen cried piteously. "If you girls had only accepted some of your splendid offers—"
"Hush, mother," said Edith imperiously. "I have heard that refrain too often already," and the resolute practical girl went to her room and shut herself up to think.
Two hours later she came down to lunch with the determined air of one who had come to a conclusion.
"These bills must be met, in part at least," she said, "and the sooner the better. After that we must buy no more than we can pay for, if it's only a crust of bread. I shall take the first train to-morrow and dispose of some of my jewelry. Who of you will contribute some also? We all have more than we shall ever need."
"Pawn our jewelry!" they all shrieked.
"No, sell it," said Edith firmly.
"You hateful creature!" sobbed Zell. "If Mr. Van Dam heard it he would never come near me again."
"If he's that kind of a man, he had better not," was the sharp retort.
"I'll never forgive you if you do it. You shall not spoil all my chances and your own too. He as good as offered himself to me, and I insist on your giving me a chance to write to him before you take one of your mad steps."
They all clamored against her purpose so strongly that Edith was borne down and reluctantly gave way. Zell wrote immediately a touching, pathetic letter that would have moved a man of one knightly instinct to come to her rescue. Van Dam read it with a look of fiendish exultation, and calling on Gus said:
"We will go up to-morrow. The right time has come. They won't be nice as to terms any longer."
It was an unfortunate thing for Edith that she had yielded at this time to the policy of waiting one hour longer. In the two days that intervened before the young men appeared there was time for that kind of thought that tempts and weakens. She was in that most dangerous attitude of irresolution. The toilsome path of independent labor looked very hard and thorny—more than that, it looked lonely. This latter aspect causes multitudes to shrink, where the work would not. She knew enough of society to feel sure that her mother was right, and that the moment she entered on bread-winning by any form of honest labor, her old fashionable world was lost to her forever. And she knew of no other world, she had no other friends save those of the gilded past. She did not, with her healthful frame and energetic spirit, shrink so much from labor as from association with the laboring classes. She had been educated to think of them only as coarse and common, and to make no distinctions.
"Even if a few are good and intelligent as these Laceys seem, they can't understand my feelings and past life, so there will be no congeniality, and I shall have to work practically alone. Perhaps in time I shall become coarse and common like the rest," she said with a half-shudder at the thought of old-fashioned garb, slipshod dressing, and long monotonous hours at one employment. All these were inseparable in her mind from poverty and labor.
Then after a long silence, during which she had sat with her chin resting on her hands, she continued:
"I believe I could stand it if I could earn a support out of the garden with such a man as Malcom to help me. There are variety and beauty there, and scope for constant improvement. But I fear a woman can't make a livelihood by such out-of-door, man-like work. Good heavens! what would my Fifth Avenue friends say if it should get to their ears that Edith Allen was raising cabbages for market?"
Then in contrast, as the alternative to labor, Gus Elliot continually presented himself.
"If he were only more of a man!" she thought. "But if he loves me so well as to marry me in view of my poverty, he must have some true manhood about him. I suppose I could learn to love him after a fashion, and I certainly like him as well as any one I know. Perhaps if I were with him to cheer, incite, and scold, he might become a fair business man after all."
And so Edith in her helplessness and fear of work was tempted to enter on that forlorn experiment which so many energetic women of decided character have made—that of marrying a man who can't stand alone, or do anything but dawdle, in the hope that they may be able to infuse in him some of their own moral and intellectual backbone.
But Gus Elliot was not man enough, had not sense enough, to give her this poor chance of matrimonial escape from labor that seemed to her like a giant taskmaster, waiting with grimy, horny hand to claim her as another of his innumerable slaves. Though a life of lonely, ill-paid toil would have been better for Edith than marriage to Gus, he was missing the one golden opportunity of his life, when he thought of Edith Allen in other character than his wife. God uses instruments, and she alone could give him a chance of being a man among men. In his meditated baseness toward her, he aimed a fatal blow at his own life.
And this is ever true of sins against the human brotherhood. The recoil of a blow struck at another's interests has often the retributive wrath of heaven in it, and the selfish soul that would destroy a fellow-creature for its own pleasure is itself destroyed.
False pride, false education, helpless, unskilled hands, an untaught, unbraced moral nature, made strong, resolute, beautiful Edith Allen so weak, so untrue to herself, that she was ready to throw herself away on so thin a shadow of a man as Gus Elliot. She might have known, indeed she half feared, that wretchedness would follow such a union. It is torment to a large strong-souled woman to despise utterly the man to whom she is chained. She revolts at his weakness and irresolution, and the probabilities are that she will sink into that worst phase of feminine drudgery, the supporting of a husband, who, though able, will not work, and that she will become that social monster of whom it is said with a significant laugh:
"She is the man of the house."
The only thing that reconciled her to the thought of marrying Gus was the hope that she could inspire him to better things; and he seemed the only refuge from the pressing troubles that environed her, and from a lonely life of labor; for the thought that she could bring herself to marry among the laboring classes had never occurred to her.
So she came to the miserable conclusion on the afternoon of the second day:
"I'll take him if he will me, knowing how I am situated."
If Gus could have been true and manly one evening, he might have secured a prop that would have kept him up, though it would have been at sad cost to Edith.
On the afternoon of Friday, Zell returned from the village with radiant face, and, waving a letter before Edith who sat moping in her room, exclaimed with a thrill of ecstasy in her tone:
"They are coming. Help make me irresistible."
Edith felt the influence of Zell's excitement, and the mysteries of the toilet began. Nature had done much for these girls, and they knew how to enhance every charm by art. Edith good-naturedly helped her sister, weaving pure shimmering pearls in the heavy braids of her hair, whose raven hue made the fair face seem more fair. The toilet-table of a queen had not the secrets of Zell's beauty, for the most skilful art must deal with the surface, while Zell's loveliness glowed from within. Her rich young blood mantled her cheek with a color that came and went with her passing thoughts, and was as unlike the flaming, unchanging red of a painted face as sunlight that flickers through a breezy grove is to a gas-jet. Her eyes shone with the deep excitement of a passionate love, and the feeling that the crisis of her life was near. Even Edith gazed with wondering admiration at her beauty, as she gave the finishing touches to her toilet, before she commenced her own.
Discarded Laura had a sorry part in the poor little play. She was to be ill and unable to appear, and so resigned herself to a novel and solitude. Mrs. Allen was to discreetly have a headache and retire early, and thus all embarrassing third parties should be kept out of the way.
The late afternoon of Friday (unlucky day for once) brought the gentlemen, dressed as exquisitely as ever, but the vision on the rustic little porch almost dazzled even their experienced eyes. They had seen these girls more richly dressed before and more radiant. There was, however, a delicious pensiveness hanging over them now, like those delicate veils that enhance beauty and conceal nothing. And there was a deep undertone of excitement that gave them a magnetic power that they could not have in quieter moods.
Their appearance and manner of greeting caused secret exultation in the black hearts that they expected would be offered to them that night, but Edith looked so noble as well as beautiful that Gus rather trembled in view of his part in the proposed tragedy. As warm and gentle as had been her greeting, she did not appear like a girl that could be safely trifled with. However, Gus knew his one source of courage and kept up on brandy all day, and he proposed a heavier onslaught than ever on poor Mrs. Allen's wine. But Edith did not bring it out. She meant that all that was said that night should be spoken in sober earnest.