Chapter IV: Part 4

"I know her," said Jack. "I don't want you to think I doubt her kindness to him. I am jealous of her. That is all."

"Kindness ain't just the word," persisted Aunt Love. "I can imagine your father livin' through such a summer as last was, and havin' a pretty weary time of it, cut off from so much that had made his life before. Now I just want you to picture this young woman, a pretty, girlish critter that had seen trouble enough to make her low-spirited if she'd had a mind to be, just studyin' to make the days pleasant for him. She was cheerful in just such a stiddy way as a brook is; not much noise about it, but always right there, singin' if so be you want it. She played games with your dear father, or she read to him, or she waited on him, or she just set and sewed and let him look at her, whichever happened to suit his mood; and he bein' always thoughtful and tender of her, 'twas just a pleasure to see 'em together. She hunted up maps and articles about places you was travelin', and from sunrise till sunset she just had one idea, and that was whether anything could make Mr. Van Tassel any more comfortable than he was. He was a happy man in spite of the new weakness which might have made him miserable. Ain't that somethin' for you to remember when you think of the woman that bears his name? You know some kinds o' clover brings the person that finds it good luck. I often used to think o' that as I watched 'em together, and I thought your father had found one of the best sort. It's a good name for her. Clover's just like her, unpretendin' and sweet, whether it's red or white; always cheerful and innocent, distillin' honey for mankind." Miss Berry paused a minute before she went on: "The word _father_ means a great deal to you, Mr. Jack. It was the heavenly Father that gave that lovely companion to soothe Mr. Van Tassel's last days; and the same all-lovin' Father has permitted a great blow to fall upon you; but the Holy One whose birthday we are keepin' to-day said that in this world we must have tribulation, and He told us, too, be of good cheer. The Saviour did overcome the world; there is a heaven, your father has gone to it, and you and I are both bound for it. It's the main concern we've got in life to get ready for it. Let your sorrow help you along, Mr. Jack, and don't shut anybody out o' your generous heart, least of all the woman I've been talkin' about."

Van Tassel took an eight o'clock train back to Boston that night. He walked to the station with a lighter step than the one that had carried him from it. Some subtle influence had softened him; some poisoned rankling dart had been drawn away. A crescent moon hung in the sky. The quiet snowclad village suggested more than ever the idea of a Christmas picture, and the song that the angels once sang, as they floated through the starry heavens, seemed now to fall like a benediction from above: "Peace on earth, good will to men."

*CHAPTER XI.*

*THE DEDICATION.*

Gorham Page thought he perceived a change for the better in the spirits of his cousin, after that visit to Pearfield, but Jack said little about the event. It was well into the New Year, when the two happened to be alone in the office one afternoon, that Jack mentioned his father's widow voluntarily for the first time since his return.

"Did I understand you to say, Gorham, that Clover sent word to me that she should not return to the Hyde Park house?"

"Yes."

"Do you think it was because she felt enmity, or because she feared it?"

"Why, it is your house," said Page. "It was left to you, as it turns out."

"Yes, but what difference does that make?" returned the other, with a tinge of impatience, the unreasonableness of which made his cousin smile.

"She wished you to feel full liberty in coming back," said the latter. "She broke down when she spoke of it, I remember."

"I don't like that," asserted Jack, turning over the pages of Blackstone. "I don't like to have Clover exiled from a comfortable place, where she would like to be. It is a dog-in-the-manger business that doesn't suit me in the least."

"I guess you needn't worry about the matter," remarked Page. "Mrs. Van Tassel is in no condition to bear a Chicago winter."

"Do you mean she is ill?" asked the other, shutting the heavy book suddenly.

"I don't know. She looks like alabaster, or something that would be easily broken. Miss Bryant was evidently much distressed about her."

Jack fell into a brown study. It sounded strange to hear his cousin speak of these old schoolmates by such names. The idea of Clover, jolly, laughing Clover, with her sunburned cheeks and dancing blue eyes,--the idea that any one should speak of her as looking like alabaster. And Miss Bryant! It was a jest in itself to hear his serious cousin refer in that tone, and by such a dignified title, to Mildred. It was more than two years since Jack had seen the romping girl, whose heavy hair would never remain in its braid, and who, it seemed, would never cease outgrowing her clothes.

He thought of the sisters for some time, while Page went on with his work. He recalled the little boy and girl who had loved him, and gentle Mrs. Bryant, whose mother-heart had always made him welcome equally with her own children. They had all gone now to that world which had lately gained definite interest for him. Had Clover and Mildred suffered yearning and loss comparable to his? The mere thought, tolerantly admitted, gave him a new feeling toward his old comrades.

At last he spoke again. "Where did Mrs. Van Tassel say they were going?"

It was the first time he had given his friend her title. Page observed it.

"California," he answered sententiously.

"That doesn't tell anything."

Page smiled slightly. "Perhaps that is just what she considered," he returned, and Jack thought that Gorham was a provoking, dry sort of fellow.

"I'll tell you what I'm going to do," he said, rising. "I'm going to Chicago."

"Are you? Well, you are that favored species of individual who can control his own movements."

"Yes. They've ceased pulling hair out there, and have decided to locate the Fair in Jackson Park, quite near our house, you remember."

"So I observed. They have lost a good deal of time in controversy, it strikes me. They will have to scratch gravel now."

And this, if Mr. Page had only known it, was literally what had begun to be done out there in Chicago, in the unreclaimed district which bordered Jackson Park on the south.

Sand-dunes, and marshes, woodland and slough, had all to be effaced, for a new earth must be offered in time to be the foundation for those castles in the air, which were already creating in men's brains.

As the scope of the proposed work unfolded and became clear, the time began to seem nigh to hopelessly short for its accomplishment. Of public opinion in the East, the kindest expression continued patronizing, amused, and skeptical; the average, contemptuous and hostile.

But Chicago, which had formed a habit of making stepping-stones of obstacles, now said "I will" with greater doggedness of purpose than ever before, and sending steam dredges to invade the wilderness, began the patient, laborious grubbing, which was necessary to excavate in one place, and fill in in another. Meanwhile the oldest inhabitant wandered about, looking on, wondering and fascinated. The maiden, going in advance of the feller of trees, caught with her kodak a farewell glimpse of the wood-road, that had furnished a foothold amid the sand for the spring violets of her childhood. The small boy looked longingly at the sloughs, which had been first to freeze in autumn, and thought it a thousand pities that Chicago had been so brave as to deserve the Fair. The Eastern papers thought so too, and still exercised the virtue of frankness to the fullest extent; but Chicago, with all her reputation for talking, now had no time for such indulgence; but emulated Uncle Remus's famous tar-baby, who, it will be remembered, when Brer Rabbit jeered at her once and again, still "ain't sayin' nothin'." She only grubbed away, and her citizens prepared themselves for the long pull, the strong pull, and the pull all together, which should win ultimate triumph.

When Jack arrived there, he found his city in all the excitement of work and plans and anticipation. His father's Scotch housekeeper, Jeanie, was in possession as of old when he reached home, and gave him a reception in which tears mingled with cordiality. "It's all different without your father, Mr. Jack," she mourned, "but we must bear it,--we must bear it."

Jack went through the house, finding changes in every room but his own. In that one, every object was familiar.

Jeanie had nothing but good words for her young mistress. She was ready to praise her as long as Jack would have patience to listen. Miss Bryant, too, came in for a share of her voluble encomiums; but she did not know where they were, for though Mrs. Van Tassel wrote her an occasional note, she said they were moving about from place to place.

The upshot of Jack's trip was, that he went back to Boston and his cousin's office, and waited for destiny to show him some natural way of communicating his generous impulses to Clover.

So he lived through the winter, keeping up some interests in common with certain of his classmates, and gaining a reputation for touchiness regarding his native city, with whose exertions he felt a loyal and filial sympathy. It made him hot to read and hear frequent allusions to prove that the public was still holding its sides with merriment over the exquisite humor of the idea that upstart, pork-packing Chicago should undertake to conceive and carry out a true World's Fair, one fit to follow the great similar achievements of the Old World nations, and to be an adequate embodiment of the high ideas which gave birth to the enterprise.

It was little mollifying to him to perceive that much of the sneering had at least the merit of genuineness; that there was much sincere incredulity of Chicago's ability to rise to an occasion so remote from her habits and experience. With his Cambridge training, his youth, and his years of absence from home, he might have sympathized in all this, more with than against the Eastern element, but for his father's active labors, and his own knowledge of the men who had the matter in hand.

Only once Jack heard of Clover and Mildred during the summer that followed. He visited Miss Berry again, and heard from her that Mrs. Van Tassel's health was reestablished, and that the sisters had taken a trip to Alaska. He asked her to convey to them, for him, an earnest invitation to return to the homestead, whenever they pleased.

Once again, in the winter, he learned from the same source of information that they had gone to Europe. In June, Van Tassel and Page took a trip through the English and Scottish lakes together. Clover and Mildred evidently wished to live a life apart. Very well, it should be as they pleased; but Jack could not help looking for them at each little inn where his and Page's horses stopped. His father's memory was still a living, ever-present one, and persons so strongly associated with him could not be forgotten.

In the autumn the young men came home to find the country absorbed in Columbian celebrations. Red and yellow was as popular a combination as red, white, and blue. Columbus was pictured on every hand. There was no sameness, no fear of monotony about these representations. He was shown thin and stout, old and young, fair and dark, narrow-visaged and rotund of countenance. Meanwhile, the dedication in his honor drew on apace.

The twentieth of October, Chicago was to be clothed in bunting, and the great men of the country were to be drawn by prancing steeds through her streets. On the twenty-first, the Exposition buildings were to be dedicated to their splendid use, and Jack Van Tassel told his cousin that they must both be present at the ceremonies. Page demurred, but Van Tassel had his way, and ten o'clock of that sunshiny, clear, Friday morning found the two men entering the grounds, where a sense of roominess was the first sensation, after struggling in the city's crowd.

Jack felt his breast swell with pride in the fair scene, incomplete, yet already inspiring; but he forbore from being the first to comment. Let the Boston man speak; and he finally did. Page's eyes slowly took in an overwhelming impression of the general scheme,--of what had already been, and what would be accomplished. Then he spoke:--

"This is great--so far."

The words were balm to his companion.

Page went on.

"But Eastern men designed these palaces. Eastern art"--

"Now look here," burst forth Jack. "Don't try to apologize for Chicago's achievement. She hasn't got there yet, quite, of course, but she is arriving. She had sense enough to make this Fair a national and not a local business. You're surely not surprised at that? She understood it that way from the first. They are not all Chicago men who have done this work, but be kind enough to remember that they are Chicago men who have laid the brains of this country under contribution, and whose indomitable energy has been the steam which has actuated the vast machinery of construction from the beginning, and will do so to the end. Don't explain it, my friend; just say it is stupendous, and pass on."

Page, as he silently obeyed, remembered Mildred Bryant's prophetic words in the Portland train:--

"It is very fortunate for the country that we have taken the Fair."

It began to look that way; still herculean tasks remained.

Jack had received an invitation to witness the parade from the loggia of the Mining building, and the cousins bent their steps thither, between the lines of waiting spectators. At present, the building was used as barracks for troops. The two glanced down the neat perspective of soldier beds, as they ran up the broad flight of steps leading to the gallery, then they came out upon the balcony that faces north, and looked with interest upon the scene. Flags in great numbers were flying from every roof. The waterways and Wooded Island lay before them in the October sunlight.

They were talking of the names of buildings, and discussing the fabulous measurements of the mountain called Manufactures and Liberal Arts, when a new party appeared from the gallery doorway. The new-comers advanced to an arch a couple of rods from where the young men were standing, and Jack, who was profoundly interested in his subject, merely received an impression of beauty and fashion as he glanced at them, and then, looking back, returned to his statistics.

"If they can only have good weather the coming winter," he went on, "the thing will be ready May 1st, in spite of the croakers."

Soft laughter and happy voices came from beyond the massive masonry, which half concealed their neighbors.

"Jack," said Page, in a low tone, "Mrs. Van Tassel and Miss Bryant are with that party."

"No! Why, I didn't see them."

"Yes. Mrs. Van Tassel has some kind of a gray and white dress on, and Miss Bryant"--

"I want to get out of here, then."

Page answered him sharply.

"Is it your intention to play the role of Indian toward those ladies the rest of your life?"

"No, nothing of the kind," returned Van Tassel uncomfortably. "I am more willing to see them than they probably are to see me. I don't blame Clover, if she chooses never to meet me again. I suppose she remembers as clearly as I do some of the last things I said to her. Whew!" for in changing their positions one member of the party had stepped back into plain sight, "what a stunning girl they have with them!"

"That was Miss Bryant," said Page.

"No, no. You didn't see the one I meant. Splendid creature; carried her head as though the Fair was built expressly for her."

"Yes, that was Miss Bryant. I have met her a number of times. Perhaps I had better go over and speak to her."

"Don't think of it till I am out of the way," and Jack grasped his cousin's arm. "That, Mildred? Milly _Bryant_?" he added incredulously, looking reminiscently into that young woman's past, and seeing a combination of tanned countenance, rough hair, and old clothes revealing surplus wrist and ankle; a picture which refused to have relation to the trim and elegant young creature who had caught his eye.

This revelation increased to a panic Jack's desire not to intrude upon these friends. As though to enlighten him still further, Mildred insisted that her sister should step back also, and see some vista, which her own movement had brought into range.

Jack instinctively shrank more closely into the shadow of his pillar, while Page sympathetically followed his example, and both stole glances at Clover's pleased, unconscious face; a changed face from that which either of the men knew as hers. Jack saw in it the signs of a greater maturity and life-experience, as well as the subtle charm which exists in a lovely woman whose advantages are set off by tasteful and fashionable attire. Page saw what still seemed to him an angelic countenance, only made earthly by the tints of healthy youth, alert with interest; these smiling lips were but distantly related to the rigid, delicate mouth he remembered.

Clover vanished again, recalled by her companions' interest in a company of cavalry who galloped in golden glory across a distant bridge.

"I wish I was out of this," exclaimed Jack. "They may all take it into their heads to come over here any minute. If the girls were alone, I shouldn't mind it. They could behave as they pleased then; but with mutual friends it would be very awkward for them. Dick Ogden is in the party. I can hear his laugh this minute. I'm going, Gorham."

"Very well, I too, then. Here comes some governor and his staff."

"Yes, it is Russell. The crowd is safe to cheer now and wave handkerchiefs for live minutes. It is our chance. We sha'n't be noticed. Come."

Jack started across the loggia with Page beside him. As ill luck would have it, the only one of the party by the balcony who turned idly curious eyes to look after the pair was his friend Ogden.

"Why there's--it _is_ Van Tassel!" ejaculated the latter. "_Oh_, Van."

How Jack anathematized the cheerful, loud voice. He turned a deaf ear and hastened on.

"Van Tassel!" bawled the other. "Here, what's the matter with you? They're here, old fellow."

There is no creature so difficult to escape as the man who is convinced he is doing you a favor.

Jack could hear the legs of his persecutor's chair grate on the flooring as he sprang to his feet. He paused and turned around, knowing that if he persisted, his misguided friend would not hesitate to pursue and capture him in his zeal.

"They're right here," repeated Ogden explanatorily, his ingenuous florid face beaming. "Wasn't it curious you should have passed by, so near and yet so far?"

Van Tassel and Page advanced, the former with a rigidly impassive countenance. It seemed long to him that he was crossing the ten feet of balcony which lay between him and the young women whose reception he feared sensitively.

Ogden, and doubtless their other friends, supposed them united by ties of intimacy. Much as he disliked to obtrude himself upon them, to permit strangers to suppose that he was not pleased to meet these ladies would set many tongues wagging and was not to be considered. Better to risk a snub than to appear disloyal to those his father had honored.

But he need not have feared. Clover and Mildred were not the inexperienced girls of his acquaintance. They had taken in the situation as keenly as he had done, and when he reached them were ready to greet him and Mr. Page in a matter-of-course manner, calculated to divert suspicion had any existed. The circumstances, moreover, were favorable. The common interest of the parade at once claimed the attention of all, and after Page had been introduced to the strangers of the party, Jack drew a breath of relief that at any rate the ice was broken.

He stood near Mildred, looking down upon the gay plumes, uniforms, and prancing steeds of the procession, and wished she would address him. Was this the girl who had always been eagerly ready to act as crew of his boat, whose strong arms had not been of contemptible assistance in bailing her out? who had received his invitations to sail in a thankful spirit, being thereby richly repaid for her physical exertions? She had sometimes needed to be snubbed out of too energetic participation in his own and Clover's plans. She had been a good fellow always, Jack remembered, even if occasionally inconveniently effervescent in the matter of animal spirits; had been an honest, fair antagonist, with a brave love of sport.

It struck Van Tassel as very curious that he should be so meekly desirous now of a crumb of friendly notice from one who had looked up to him so long and loyally.

He wished he could forget some of those heated things he had said to Clover on that miserable afternoon. Of course she had repeated them to her sister, and he felt uncomfortably sure that the memory of them was even now seething beneath the jetted crown of Miss Bryant's hat.

He envied Page the unconsciousness with which he could lean toward either sister, making and receiving comments. Clover's sweet face moved him with a tide of thought that gave his eyes a sad expression, which she caught on the only occasion when she looked up into his face.

On the whole, it was an uncomfortable half-hour which Jack spent in that loggia. The talk and laughter of the others gave him a feeling of remoteness and isolation. He wanted Clover or Mildred to speak to him, and they did not. He could not address them without a bit of encouragement. It was a relief to him when it was proposed to forsake the interminable lines of militia which were filing by the Transportation Building, and adjourn in search of luncheon.

Page seemed determined to accept Dick Ogden's urgent invitation that the cousins should continue of the party, and indeed Gorham started off gayly with Mildred, as though it were a matter of course that Jack should follow. The consequence was that, feeling a good deal as though the whole experience were a dream of the Thanksgiving variety, Van Tassel found himself after a while placed next Clover at table. On her other side sat Dick's mother, a lady remarkable for an imposing figure and a fluffy pompadour of curling white hair. As this personage declared that the morning in the open air had given her an alarming appetite and proceeded to apply her full attention to its demands, conversation with her languished. Jack observed this, and renouncing the nightmare idea with an effort, endeavored to make necessity serve him.

"You have been abroad all summer, I believe," he remarked to his neighbor.

"Yes, longer than that," returned Clover. Her self-possession seemed untroubled; but in reality she suffered, too, from mingled emotions. She pitied Jack, but resented the fact that circumstances had forced them together, and his presence evoked memories overwhelmingly bitter and tender.

"Gorham Page and I did the lake regions of England and Scotland this year," he went on. "Did you happen to be in that vicinity?"

"No, we stayed in Switzerland during the summer months."

"You have seen much of the world in the last two years."

"Yes. Mildred and I feel ourselves quite experienced travelers."

"Shall you be satisfied to settle down now for a time?"

"I can hardly tell. We have formed a dangerous habit."

"Are you"--Jack looked busily into his plate--"Are you stopping at home--at the old house?"

"We have no home yet. We mean to settle down some day and make one."

"Why, have you parted with that dear old place, Mrs. Van Tassel?" asked Mrs. Ogden sonorously, helping herself again to chicken salad.

"Mrs. Van Tassel finds it rather large for her purposes, I fancy," answered Jack quickly, "and our old housekeeper mourns her defection; but we haven't parted with the place. I was there in January, Clover, and Jeanie shed a few tears in her homesickness for you. I haven't seen her yet this time. Page and I only got in yesterday, and we went to the Great Northern."

Jack did not add that this unusual step was taken because he hoped that Clover and her sister might have returned and taken advantage of the invitation he sent them long ago through Miss Berry.

"Do you know how steadily I have clung to Boston of late?" he continued.

"Aunt Love wrote me you were there with your cousin. Are you going to adopt it as your home?"

"No indeed. You will think, Mrs. Ogden," leaning forward to speak across Clover to her neighbor, "that Mrs. Van Tassel and I are very poor correspondents. Here we have both been roving about for the past year and waiting to meet in order to learn details about one another's movements."

"You can't tell me anything about young men as correspondents," replied Mrs. Ogden feelingly. "When Dick is away, the most I ever expect from him is a telegram every day or two."

"We're a bad lot," admitted Jack. "No," speaking again to Clover, "I am a Chicagoan, and just now prouder than ever of the fact. I fancy that we shall all come home like straying chickens on May 1, '93. Of course you intend to be here during the Fair?"

"Yes. Mildred and I both anticipate it highly."

"I tell you, Mrs. Van Tassel," put in Mrs. Ogden, "if you don't want to use your house next summer, you can make a fortune renting it. In that situation, within walking distance of the grounds, you can get anything you like to ask for it."

Clover for a second time was about to disclaim any right or title to the homestead, but Jack besought her with a glance.

"I think we shall find it too convenient to be dispensed with," he said hastily.

After luncheon the party separated; their invitations to the dedicatory exercises in the Liberal Arts Building admitting them to different situations.

The scene was such as one is glad to have assisted in for its uniqueness if nothing more. Even seeing scarcely made it possible to grasp the vastness of an auditorium covering forty acres; through whose outer corridors companies of cavalry passed now and then without making a noticeable sound within. Theodore Thomas's orchestra with its attendant singers, a company of six thousand in all, made but a little bright bouquet in one spot, and the leader was obliged to telephone to the platform half way down the hall in order to be informed when a speech had ceased and a musical number might take its turn.

At the end of the building opposite from Thomas, the Mexican band enlivened the meditations of the few thousands, fifteen or so, who were hear enough to enjoy their martial strains. Mammoth banners and flags made gay the grand arches that supported the roof, and each tassel on those which were so decorated weighed as much as a woman.

Only a Brobdingnagian could have felt at ease in such surroundings, yet wonderful order was maintained amid this largest audience ever gathered together under one roof.

Clover and Mildred were near enough to the singers to hear the _piece de resistance_, Chadwick's inspiring, moving ode, and as she listened Clover's eyes grew moist under the stress of the day's emotions.

"Jack is evidently very friendly," she said that night to her sister, when they were alone in their room at the Auditorium.

"He ought to be," returned Mildred shortly.

"He behaved very well and kindly," continued Clover. "The situation was odious."

"Odious. I should think so," remarked Mildred. "I never disliked that bawling Dick Ogden as I did when he kept on calling Jack like that. Don't begin to praise him to me," added the girl, turning toward her elder a glowing face. "After Jack Van Tassel has dragged around on his knees a good long time I am going to forgive him. Not before."

Clover looked troubled. "But it might all have been so awkward for us had he chosen to behave differently," she protested. "It is much easier for us to lock injuries in our breasts that the world knows nothing of, than it would be to have a gossiping set of people wondering and staring. Jack has grasped the bunch of nettles and saved us from those stings. You can feel as you please about it, but I am grateful."

"I wish he would go away. I wish he'd go to Kamschatka," exclaimed Mildred hotly. "I can't rid myself, when he is present, of the idea that he is considering how very differently we should be situated now if it weren't for dear Mr. Van Tassel."

"Well, it is true."

"Don't be tiresome, Clover. Of course it is true; but Jack has grown so grave and quietly observing, I feel that I shall not be able to endure having him about. I like fine clothes and fashionable life generally, and when I am soaring in my natural element, if Jack is going to give me those meditative, suggestive stares, it will ruin my pleasure. It is just as if one had a string about a bird's ankle and could twitch it down whenever he liked."

"I think you feel so because you haven't talked with him yet, Mildred. You know Jack was always generous."

"Was he?" the young girl faced her sister. "Was he when he accused you and insulted you?"

"Oh, I've forgiven him, Milly," returned the other gently, making a repressive gesture. "I have considered his standpoint a great deal since then; and we enjoyed his father and benefited by him when the only son was far away. We even had the priceless privilege of serving him in his last days, while Jack was unwittingly defrauded. Oh, I should not have been at all surprised if he had been unable to take me by the hand to-day. Don't be hard on Jack."

*CHAPTER XII.*

*GORHAM PAGE'S COMMISSION.*

A few days afterward a bell-boy brought Gorham Page's card to Mrs. Van Tassel's parlor. It was followed shortly by the young man himself, who felicitated himself upon his good fortune in finding her at home.

"My stay in Chicago will be so short, that had you been out I fear I should not have met you again," he said. "I am happy to see, Mrs. Van Tassel," Gorham inspected her with kindly, short-sighted eyes, "that travel has done all for you Miss Bryant hoped. Your face has quite a new color and contour."

"No, just my old one," she answered lightly, indicating a seat near her own. "I am sorry my sister is out; but she is a gay girl," with a little smiling sigh. "Wherever she is, somehow a number of engagements seem to crop up."

"Yes. One can see that she is a leader by nature. I should like to have seen Miss Bryant. However, my errand is with you especially to-day."

"Oh, it is an errand that has brought you? How unflattering!"

"Not necessarily. It argued nothing unflattering when John Alden performed his famous errand to Priscilla."

Page looked argumentatively into his hostess's amused eyes.

"Haven't you gone a long way afield for a simile?" she asked.

"No, I think not. I was quite as reluctant as poor John to accept the mission."

"Then decline it even at this late hour. I am the least curious of women."

"Impossible." Page shook his head. "Miles Standish is waiting for me over there at the Northern, and he is in a great state of mind."

"You tempt me to wish I had been out when your card came up. Perfunctory visits are very uncomfortable. I think you had better return to your friend, and tell him that Priscilla would not allow you to speak."

"I'm not making you uncomfortable, am I?" asked Gorham looking up and half laughing. "You see it is this way. I wanted to come to see you, and as soon as Jack learned my intention, he burdened me with this business. He told me to be eloquent, and not being in the least so, I am overwhelmed by my responsibilities. I had a presentiment, and told him so, that I should make a mess of the whole affair; but he insisted upon trusting his messenger as blindly as the Puritan captain of old."

Page had a way of lapsing, as he talked, into a meditative manner.

"And do you insist upon refusing to be warned by John Alden's failure?" asked Mrs. Van Tassel.

"Oh, I mustn't fail," he returned with prompt simplicity. "That is, if I do I shall take a room here in the Auditorium for the remainder of my stay. We all make rather a pet of Jack," he explained. "The thought of denying him or contradicting him presents itself somewhat in the light of a catastrophe. What do you think, Mrs. Van Tassel, of the effect on the average character of a habit of success?"

Really, Clover thought this was one of the oddest men she had ever met; but his question was so serious that she felt constrained to express an opinion.

"I am afraid I am no student of character, but I should say it would have a genial, developing effect."

"Yes, one thinks so at the first blush, and that continued failure would dwarf the faculties. One can hardly lay down a rule where exceptions are so numerous; and of course success and failure are never accidents."

"I think they seem to be so very often."

"No," Page shook his head. "Everything is the result of law."

"Then the character that dominates and commands success must grow by what it feeds upon, and expand in its own sunlight. I was right."

"Yes; but the flowers and fruits of a tropical sun are heavy in scent and often coarse of flavor: while the flower that struggles for life and develops in meagre warmth is like the New England arbutus, both strong and delicate."

"People have such varying standards by which they measure success and failure," said Clover. "That sort of scanty, hard-won success which might be typified by the arbutus would scarcely be counted success by many."

"True," said Page, nodding his head at her thoughtfully. "There ought to be some reliable touchstone which we could apply to every case."

"Surely there is," replied Clover.

Her guest brightened. "You mean we should judge according to our best education in right and wrong?"

She nodded. "It amounts to that. It seems to me that all that comes to us is important only according to its effect on character."

Page looked at her with admiring approval. Here was a woman, a girl in years, who had thought.

"Are your beliefs simply ethical," he asked, "or are you religious in the usual acceptation of the word?"

"I suppose I understand you," she replied. "I think if I could not say that I am religious I should not be here to say anything. I have stood in places where ethical culture and humanitarianism would not have saved me."

"Such testimony interests me very much," he answered, "especially from a young and beautiful woman."

Clover colored with surprise at this bluntness. She need not have shrunk. Page was as usual making an impersonal statement as nearly accurate as possible.

"I have not a particle of doubt," he continued, "that there is a world of causes, and that ours is a world of effects. Why should not the universe have a soul as well as the human body?"

"Yes; only you do not state it well," returned Clover, entering into his spirit of analysis. "It is not the body that has the soul, but the soul that has the body and will be through with it after a while."

Page bowed. "I agree to that. I believe in immortality. We have been sent upon this plane of existence; and to find out why is a problem of daily interest."

"Yes. Our wishes were not consulted when we came, and will not be consulted when we go. It seems evident enough to me that we are being sent to school."

"Some of us appear to learn very little, though," remarked Page.

"Some of us are set one lesson many times," answered Clover slowly, "until we learn it. The hand must be unclasped many times before we learn to relax our rigid hold on what we have considered our own. It is one great lesson of life, I have found, to learn to be relaxed. You know how much is said now by physical culturists on the subject of letting go abnormal tension of the muscles of the body. Isn't the correspondence interesting? We can only have spiritual self-possession when we relax the tension of our own wills and let the divine will sway us."

"We are free agents, though," objected Page, "and we must behave as if our own wills were all-powerful; else we should never accomplish anything."

"Oh yes," agreed Clover; "but if one is firmly convinced that the higher Power is omniscient, there is all the time an undercurrent of acknowledgment that one is being directed, and it becomes second nature to ask for the direction in all sorts of wordless ways."

"You believe in that sort of Providence, then?" asked Gorham curiously. "I believe every one has a God--his own God."

"Yes; my God is a Father who thought it worth while to create me, and therefore, I am sure, thinks it worth while to lead me through all the ways I am to traverse. He is close to me all the time. Whether I feel that I am close to Him, depends entirely on myself."

Page regarded the speaker a moment in silence. Her face looked near to heaven then, he thought. "Such faith comes more easily to women than to men, apparently," he said at last.

"Why should it? How strangely people behave and talk, or rather avoid talking of spiritual things as if such subjects were superstitious. I suppose perhaps it is because I have had so many dear ones slip away into the other world that it seems so real to me. It has often been said that death is the only certain event which we can count on; but people will cease to shrink from it only when they cease to think of it as death. No wonder the love of life is strongly implanted. It is all we need look forward to. The loneliness we have to suffer here," Clover paused a moment, "is a part of the schooling."

"You have made good use of your experiences," observed Page.

"Not always," returned the other. "Nevertheless, I believe that is the chief thing we have to do,--to learn something above worldly wisdom from our experiences little and great."

"So your theory regarding success and failure would simply be to decide its real nature by its spiritual effect on a man."

"Yes," Clover smiled. "You have thought of that before or you would not have grasped so quickly what I meant."

Her visitor nodded. "Yes, I have had a similar thought. The greatest apparent success may amount to a failure if it make a man more arrogant and selfish than before; and the most dismal failure is a success if only it brings with it an interior humility and willingness to be taught."

They talked another quarter of an hour before Page arose and took his leave. He left his compliments and farewell for Miss Bryant, shook hands with Clover, and reached the door of the room before he started and turned back with sudden recollection.

"Why didn't you remind me?" he said reproachfully. "I haven't done my errand."

Mrs. Van Tassel smiled. "Priscilla's part was a passive one, if I recollect rightly."

"But you also recollect the rough temper of Captain Standish. I think you are rather cruel."

"Oh, failure might have given you true humility."

"I make plenty of failures, thank you. Please don't let this be one of them, and don't judge Jack's intensity of interest by my own. May I sit down once more?" Page knotted his brow reminiscently. "Jack outlined a plan for me. He suggested a number of arguments with which I was to lead up to the main idea, but they are pretty well muddled in my brain now." Gorham gave a short, desperate laugh. "After this confession of weakness, Mrs. Van Tassel, you will be obliged, if only out of generosity, to send me back with a 'yes.' Now, let me see; I'm confident this ought not to come first, but Jack wanted me to say that he was certain that Uncle Richard left the homestead to him instead of to you, at your own instigation."

Clover, who had not been able to imagine what was coming, acquiesced gravely. "Mr. Van Tassel would probably have acted as he did in any case, but I wanted to make certain that Jack's dear old home should be secured to him."

"It humiliates Jack to feel that you avoid the place for fear he might go there."

"This is an unpleasant errand for you, Mr. Page."

"Please don't use that tone. Jack means so well, I couldn't refuse to be the go-between. He asks, he even begs, that if you intend to remain in Chicago now, you will go back to your home. It is comfortable. All your belongings are there. His father made every arrangement for you. Jack feels sure he would be grieved to have you leave it. He himself is going back to Boston. The housekeeper is alone there and is pining for you; I forget whether that was to be an argument, but the fact remains. Jack thinks it would save a lot of talking among your friends if you were to go on in the old way. Naturally, he has no use for such a big place. It would be too lonely to endure under the circumstances, and it is hardly the thing to leave the house tenantless year after year. Of course all this is under Jack's supposition that you have no prejudice against the home as a home. If that is false"--

"No. I have a strong attachment for the locality and the house itself. Mildred has also."

"Then you will say yes; and I will promise to take my success as meekly as you could desire."

"Shall I do it, Mr. Page?" asked Clover, looking perplexed.

"By all means, if you ask me. Here is the Fair coming on, and the difficulties of suiting one's self in a home in Chicago are going to be many, I fancy."

"I don't want to think of that. We should be able to find a comfortable place."

"Then consider that suggestion unmade, and let me take your consent to Jack. Do you still hesitate?"

"Yes. I had quite made up my mind to do without Jack, and this would change all that."

"Jack does not at all wish to be dispensed with."

"I consider," said Clover with grave gentleness, "that I owe him any favor he chooses to claim; but it seems quixotic on his part to call this one."

"And yet he does. We cannot always understand the vagaries of youth, Mrs. Van Tassel."

"Jack was always willful," she returned, smiling sadly. "Tell him I thank him, Mr. Page, and that Mildred and I will talk it over."

An hour after Gorham's departure, a note was brought to Clover. It was from Jack. He said:--

I thank you for considering my proposition. I have a feeling that in the end you will not refuse me. I have suffered for every unjust word I ever said to you, Clover, and now the only peace possible for me is to be in friendly relations with those my father loved. Only when you are living again under his roof shall I feel that I have won his forgiveness as well as yours. The selfish jealousy of you which has made my heart sore has gone, and gratitude has taken its place. We have both lived long in two years, and suffered much. We can feel for each other.

Forgive your old comrade, JACK.

Clover's tears fell upon this abrupt note, and her heart went out to her friend. She did not need now to talk the matter over with Mildred. She had decided to return to the home by the lake.

Jack went back to Boston without seeing her again; for although he called, the sisters were both away.

*CHAPTER XIII.*

*MAY DAY.*

What Chicagoan will ever forget the winter of '92 and '93! It was as though the elements had joined with the majority who frowned down their city's audacious effort. The newspapers recorded the storms and their damage. What an unthinkable thing it was to undertake a World's Fair in such a climate! Certainly if one wanted an allegory of discomfort one had but to visit the Garden City at that season, and witness the teaming through torn-up streets, the building, and the elevating of railroad tracks, while the sense of shortness of time sent men to labor and often to die in exposed places when the mercury was lost below the zero mark. Roads were either iron-bound, or deep in the mud of a thaw, and blizzards descended furiously upon the glass portions of Exposition structures, destroying in an hour the work of weeks.

As the first of May approached, more stinging grew the criticisms upon the authorities who had failed to have the Columbian Exposition entirely ready to keep its engagement; but though on the great day Chicago was still in an undeniably uncomfortable condition of unfinished hotels and bad weather, the White City rose like a perfect superb lily from its defiling mud, and the great crowd that swarmed into Jackson Park on the morning of May 1st found so much to marvel at that they were good-natured and eager under a chill gray sky, and unmindful of the clinging soil into which they sank at every step.

Jack Van Tassel had arrived in town a couple of days before, and after registering at his hotel had called immediately at his old home.

The girls received him cordially, although he was unexpected. One or two letters had passed between Clover and himself during the winter, and she now asked him to leave his hotel and take possession of his old room. He declined with thanks, stating that his plans did not yet permit of a prolonged stay in the West, and that it would not be worth while to make the change.

"I am afraid he saw that I hesitated when I asked him," said Clover to her sister after the guest had departed. "I wish we had known that he was coming, then we could have thought the matter over and arrived at a decision. I really didn't know whether I was doing a proper thing or not."

Mildred, who had seen and been amused by her sister's perplexity all through the call, laughed mischievously.

"It is an odd thing if you can't invite your son to visit you," she said.

Clover regarded her helplessly, but she could not help smiling too. "I don't know whether we should be outraging conventionality or not," she repeated. "He will be coming back again in a little while. If only Jeanie hadn't deserted us. It was such an inconvenient season for her to be overwhelmed with homesickness, but she said it was the first time that she had not been really needed here."

"You remind me of Iolanthe," said Mildred wickedly. "I couldn't help thinking of it all the time Strephon was here." And then she sang:--

"'I wouldn't say a word that could be construed as injurious,
But to find a mother younger than her son is very curious,
And that's the sort of mother who is usually spurious;
Tara diddle, tara diddle, tol lol lay.'"

The color rose under Clover's clear skin as she joined reluctantly in her sister's laugh. "Perhaps we had better procure a dragon," she suggested.

"Oh, wait a little," returned Mildred, loath to alter their present mode of life.

But Jack, before he left, had agreed to call for his friends on the morning of May 1st to take them to see the opening exercises in the new city whose completed splendor they had not before beheld.

The three walked down through the grounds in the dull gray weather, and joined the half million of souls who waited in the Court of Honor to see President Cleveland touch the electric button.

Clover gazed at the white magnificence of architecture, and felt a thrill at the solemn stillness pervading all, which the fine orchestral music only accented.

"It seems to me like the story of Galatea," she said to Jack. "We are waiting to see the breath of life breathed into the statue."

Van Tassel looked down the Grand Basin to where the heroic Republic stood veiled in white from the eyes of men. The low-hanging sky hung its pall above all.

"I think the button may start the clouds as well as the machinery," he remarked. "They look as though they were only waiting some signal to pour down."

"We shall need a shower-bath to put out the fires of our enthusiasm," exclaimed Mildred, who looked as excited as she felt. "Oh, Jack, aren't you glad you are a Chicagoan? Aren't you glad that we've gathered goldenrod right in this very spot in front of the Administration Building?"

Jack protested that he shared this subtle joy fully; and at the moment a new shiver of expectation passed through the throng. The music had ceased. The President had begun to speak. It was a solemn moment, a triumphant moment, when at last the electric button was pressed, hitherto motionless machinery suddenly throbbed, and the vast pulses of the stately, statuesque White City began to beat.

Clover and Mildred unconsciously clasped hands, and their breath came fast as they stood facing the majestic Peristyle, its marble columns surmounted by the solemn, glad, immortal declaration: "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

Jack stood beside them, his head bared before this beginning of a new era; for at the touching of the signal, down fell the veil from the golden Republic, up streamed the enormous jets of water from the fountains; color and movement thrilled along the roofs of the snowy palaces; flags of all nations unfurled gayly from myriad staffs; the boom of artillery thundered from the lake side; and as the multitude, swayed by mighty feeling, rent the air with cheers, the sun burst from a cloud and blessed the scene with new splendor. The World's Columbian Exposition had opened.

Van Tassel accepted Clover's invitation to dinner that afternoon when they reached home, chilled with much standing about in the spring wind.

The impersonal common interest of the day had done much toward reestablishing the old easy relation among the trio.

"So Jeanie felt a call to visit her own kin, did she?" said Jack as they sat at table. "She is so much a part of the house I miss her."

"Yes; she could not be tempted from her project even by the prospect of the Fair. 'What do I want with the Fair?' she asked contemptuously. 'Chicago's just got unbearable since they started it.' But she wanted me to promise to take her back when all the excitement is over and she returns to America," said Clover. "Of course we miss her very much; but at present we get on finely."

"Yes," remarked Mildred, "I don't know that Jeanie would be pleased to know how well. I believe she was right. No doubt a person of her sort would be more fatigued than interested by the Fair."

"I was wondering this morning," said Jack, "while we were waiting down there, what Aunt Love would say to it all."

Clover smiled. "I think Chicago and everything connected with it seems as far off to her as the Sandwich Islands;" but as she spoke a novel thought came into her mind, and after Jack had gone she imparted it to Mildred.

"I have had a brilliant idea," she announced.

"That is nothing new," returned her sister. "A quarter, please," holding out her hand.

Clover loftily ignored both the compliment and the request for prompt recompense.