Chapter II: Part 2

“What do you mean?”

“You see I never knew it before.”

“You never knew what before?”

“That you were married.”

“Until when?”

“Until after you went out of the room to-night.”

The men were putting the clams around. She seemed to reflect. And then she peppered and salted them before she spoke.

“Bob is very wrong to talk so,” she said at last, picking up her fork, “when you’re his friend, too.”

He poked his clams—he hated clams.

“I suppose men think it’s amusing to do such things,” she continued, “but I think it’s as ill-bred as practical joking.”

“But you are married,” he said, trying fiercely to pepper some taste into the tasteless things before him.

“Yes, I’m married,” she admitted tranquilly, “but, then, my husband went to Africa so soon afterwards that he hardly seemed to count at all. And then he was killed there; so, after that, he seemed to count less than ever.”

The air danced exclamation points and the man on the other side spoke to her then so that her turning to answer him gave Jack time to rally his wits.

(A widow!)

Then she turned back and said:

“I think Bob mystified you unnecessarily. Of course I don’t flatter myself that you’ve suffered.”

“Oh, but I have,” he hastened to assure her.

(A widow! A widow!)

“But it always makes a difference whether a woman is married or not.”

“I should say it did,” he interrupted again. “It makes all the difference in the world.”

At that she laughed outright, and someone suddenly abstracted the distasteful clams and substituted for them a golden and glorious soup, and music sounded forth from some invisible quartet, and—and—

(A widow! A widow! A widow!)

Chapter Five The Day After Falling in Love

The next day was a very memorable day for Jack. The day after a falling in love is always a red-letter day; but the day after _the_ falling in love—ah!

One looks back—far back—to the day before, and those hours of the day before, when her sun had not yet dawned, and struggles to recollect what ends life could have represented then. And one looks forward to the next day, the next week, the next year—but, particularly to the next morning with sensations as indescribable as they are delightful.

Whichever way you tip it, the kaleidoscope of the future arranges itself in equally attractive shapes of rainbow hue, and the prospect over land or sea—even if it is raining—looks brilliant green, and brighter red, and brightest yellow.

Upon that glorious “next day” of Jack’s the weather was quite a thing apart for February—partaking of the warmth of May, and owing that fact to a sun which early June need not have scorned to own. Under the circumstances the house party overflowed the house and ravaged the surrounding country, and Jack and Mrs. Rosscott began it all by having the highest cart and the fastest cob in the stables and making for the forest just as the clock was tolling ten.

“Do you want a groom?” asked Burnett, who was occasionally very cruel.

“Well, I’m not going to wait for him to get ready now,” replied his sister, who had sharp wits and did not disdain to give even her own family the benefit of them.

Then she gathered up the reins and whip in a most scientific manner, and they were off. Jack folded his arms. He was simply flooded, drenched, and saturated with joy. The evening before had been Elysium when she had only been his now and again for a minute’s conversation, but now she was to be his and his alone until—until they came back—and his mind seemed able to grasp no dearer outlines of the form which Bliss Incarnate may be supposed to take. He didn’t care where they went or what they saw or what they talked of, just if only he and she might be going, seeing, and talking for the benefit of one another and of one another alone.

They bowled away upon a firm, hard road that skirted the park, and then plunged deeply into the forest. Mrs. Rosscott handled the reins and the whip with the hands of an expert.

“I like to drive,” said she.

“You appear to,” he answered.

“I like to do everything,” she said. “I’m very athletic and energetic.”

“I’m glad of that,” he told her warmly. “I like athletic girls.”

He really thought that he was speaking the truth, although upon that first day if she had declared herself lazy and languid he would have found her equally to his taste—because it was the first day.

“That’s kind of you, after my speech,” she said smiling, “but let’s wait a bit before we begin to talk about me. Let us talk about you first—you’re the company, you know.”

“But there’s nothing to tell about me,” said Jack, “except that I’m always in difficulties—financial—or otherwise,—oftenest ‘otherwise,’ I must confess.”

“But you have a rich aunt, haven’t you?” said Mrs. Rosscott. “I thought that I had heard about your aunt.”

“Oh, yes, I have a rich aunt,” Jack said, laughing, “and I can assure you that if I am not much credit to my aunt, my aunt is the greatest possible credit to me.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that, too,” said Mrs. Rosscott, joining in the laugh, “you see I’m well posted.”

“If you’re so well posted as to me,” Jack said, “do be kind and post me a little as to yourself. You don’t need information and I do.”

She turned and looked at him.

“What shall I tell you first?” she inquired.

“Tell me what you like and what you don’t like—and that will give me courage to do the same later,” he added boldly.

She laughed outright at that and then sobered quickly.

“I told you that I liked to drive and to do everything,” she said lightly; “what else do you want to know about?”

“What you dislike.”

“But I don’t know of anything that I dislike;” she said thoughtfully—“perhaps I don’t like England; I am not sure, though. I had a pretty good time there after all—only you know, being in mourning was so stupid. And then, too, I didn’t fit into their ideas. I really didn’t seem to get the true inwardness of what was expected of me. Oh, I never dared let them know at home what a failure I was as an Englishwoman. I mortified my husband’s sisters all the time. Just think—after a whole year I often forgot to say ‘Fancy now!’ and used to say ‘Good gracious!’ instead.”

Jack laughed.

“My husband’s sisters were very unhappy about it. They did want to love me, because I had so much money; but it was tough work for them. Did you ever know any middle-aged English young ladies?” she asked him suddenly.

“No, I never did,” he said.

“Really, they seem to be a thing apart that can’t grow anywhere but in England. Every married man has not less than two, nor more than three, and they always are a little gray and embroider very nicely. Someone told me that as long as there’s any hope they wear stout boots and walk about and hunt, but as soon as it’s hopeless they take to embroidering.”

“It must be rather a blue day for them when they decide definitely to make the change,” said Jack.

“I never thought of that,” said Mrs. Rosscott soberly. “Of course it must! I was always very good to them. I gave them ever so many things that I could have used longer myself, and they used to set pieces of muslin in behind the open-work places and wear them.”

She sighed.

“It’s quite as bad as being a Girton girl,” she said. “Do you know what a Girton girl is?”

“No, I don’t.”

“It’s a girl from Girton College. It’s the most awful freak you ever saw. They’re really quite beyond everything. They’re so homely, and their hands and feet are so enormous, and their pins never pin, and their belts never belt. And no one has ever married one of them yet!”

She paused dramatically.

“I won’t either, then,” he declared.

She laughed at that, and touched up the cob a trifle.

“Did you live long in England?” he asked.

“Forever!” she answered with emphasis; “at least it seemed like forever. Mamma left me there when I was nineteen (she married me off before she left me, of course) and I stayed there until last winter—until I was out of my mourning, you know—and then I was on the Continent for a while, and then I returned to papa.”

“How do we strike you after your long absence?”

“Oh, you suit me admirably,” she said, turning and smiling squarely into his face; “only the terrible ‘and’ of the majority does get on my nerves somewhat.”

“What ‘and’?”

“Haven’t you noticed? Why when an American runs out of talking material he just rests on one poor little ‘and’ until a fresh run of thought overwhelms him; you listen to the next person you’re talking with, and you’ll hear what I mean.”

Jack reflected.

“I will,” he said at last.

The road went sweeping in and out among a thicket of bare tree trunks and brown copses, and the sunlight fell out of the blue sky above straight down upon their heads.

“If it don’t annoy you, my referring to England so often,” said she presently, “I will state that this reminds me of Kaysmere, the country place of my father-in-law.”

“Is your father-in-law living yet?”

“Dear me, yes—and still has hold of the title that I supposed I was getting when I was married to his eldest son. My father-in-law is a particularly healthy old gentleman of eighty. He was forty years old when he married. He didn’t expect to marry, you know—he couldn’t see his way to ever affording it. But he jumped into the title suddenly and then, of course, he married right away. He had to. You’d know what a hurry he must have been in to look at my mamma-in-law’s portrait.”

“Was she so very beautiful?”

“No; she was so very homely. Maude’s very like her.”

Jack laughed.

She laughed, too.

“Aren’t we happy together?” she asked.

“My sky knows but one cloud,” he rejoined, “and that is that Monday comes after Sunday.”

“But we shall meet again,” said Mrs. Rosscott. “Because,” she added mischievously, “I don’t suppose that it’s on account of my cousin Maude that you rebel at the approach of Monday.”

“No,” said Jack. “It may not be polite to say so to you, but I wasn’t in the least thinking of your cousin.”

“Poor girl!” said Mrs. Rosscott thoughtfully; “and she was so sweet to you, too. Mustn’t it be terrible to have a face like that?”

“It must indeed,” said Jack; “I can think of but one thing worse.”

“What?”

“To marry a face like that.”

She laughed again.

“You’re cruel,” she declared; “after all her face isn’t her fortune, so what does it matter?”

“It doesn’t matter at all to me,” said Jack. “I know of very few things that can matter less to me than Miss Lorne’s face.”

“Now, you’re cruel again; and she was so nice to you too. Absolutely, I don’t believe that the edges of her smile came together once while she was talking to you last night.”

“Did you spy on us to that extent?” said Jack. “I wouldn’t have believed it of you.”

“Oh, I’m very awful,” she said airily. “You’ll be more surprised the farther you penetrate into the wilderness of my ways.”

“And when will I have a chance to plunge into the jungle, do you think?”

“Any Saturday or Sunday that you happen to be in town.”

“Are you going to live in town?”

“For a while. I’ve taken a house until the beginning of July. I expect some friends over, and I want to entertain them.”

Jack felt the sky above become refulgent. He was in the habit of spending every Saturday night in the city—he and Burnett together.

“May I come as often as I like?” he asked.

“Certainly,” said she; “because you know if you should come too often I can tell the man at the door to say I’m ‘not at home’ to you.”

“But if he ever says: ‘She’s not at home to you,’ I shall walk right in and fall upon the man that you are being at home to just then.”

“But he is a very large man,” said Mrs. Rosscott seriously; “he’s larger than you are, I think.”

Jack felt the blue heavens breaking up into thunderbolts for his head at _this_ speech.

“But I’m way over six feet,” he said, his heart going heavily faster, even while he told himself that he might have known it, anyhow.

“He’s all of six feet two,” she said meditatively. “I do believe he’s even taller. I remember liking him at the first glance, just because he struck me as so royal looking.”

He was miserably conscious of acute distress.

“Do—do you mind my smoking?” he stammered.

(Might have known that, of course, there was bound to be someone like that.)

“Not at all,” she rejoined amiably. “I like the odor of cigarettes. Shall I stop a little, while you set yourself afire?”

“It isn’t necessary,” he said. “I can set myself afire under any circumstances.”

He lit a cigarette.

“Is he English?” he couldn’t help asking then.

“Yes,” she said; “I like the English.”

“You appear to like everything to-day.” He did not intend to seem bitter, but he did it unintentionally.

(Confounded luck some fellows have.)

“I do. I’m very well content to-day.”

He was silent, thinking.

“Well,” she queried, after a while.

He pulled himself together with an effort.

“I think perhaps it’s just as well,” he said.

“What is just as well?”

“That I know.”

“Know what?”

“About him. I shan’t ever take the chances of calling on you now.”

She laughed.

“He wouldn’t put you out unless I told him to,” she said. “You needn’t be too afraid of him, you know.”

His face grew a trifle flushed.

“I’m not afraid,” he said, as coldly as it was in him to speak; “but I’ll leave him the field.”

She turned and looked at him.

“The field?” she asked, with puzzled eyebrows.

“Yes.”

Then she frowned for an instant, and then a species of thought-ray suddenly flew across her face and she burst out laughing.

“Why, I do believe,” she cried merrily, “I do believe you’re jealous of the man at the door.”

“Weren’t you speaking of a man in the drawing-room?” he asked, all her phrases recurring to his mind together.

“No,” she said laughing; “I was speaking of my footman. Oh, you are so funny.”

The way the sun shone suddenly again! His horizon glowed so madly that he quite lost his head and leaning quickly downward seized her hand in its little tan driving glove of stitched dogskin, and kissed it—reins and all.

“I’m not funny,” he said, “it was the most natural thing in the world.”

She was laughing, but she curbed it.

“You’d better not be foolish,” she said warningly. “It don’t mix well with college.”

“I’m thinking of cutting college,” he declared boldly.

“Don’t let us decide on anything definite until we’ve known one another twenty-four hours,” she said, looking at him with a gravity that was almost maternal; and then she turned the horse’s head toward home.

Chapter Six The Other Man

That evening Burnett felt it necessary to give his friend a word of warning.

“Holloway’s going to take Betty in to-night,” he said, as they descended the tower stairs together.

“Who’s Holloway?” Jack asked.

“You can’t expect to have her all the time, you know,” Burnett continued: “She’s really one of the biggest guns here, even if she is one of the family.”

“Who’s Holloway?”

“Last night the _mater_ had her all mapped out for General Jiggs, and I had an awful time getting her off his hook and on to yours, and then you drove her all this morning and walked her all the afternoon, and the old lady says she’s got to play in Holloway’s yard to-night—jus’ lil’ bit, you know.”

“Who’s Holloway?” Jack demanded.

“You know Horace Holloway; we were up at his place once for the night. Don’t you remember?”

“I remember his place well enough; but he hadn’t got in when we came, and hadn’t got up when we left, so his features aren’t as distinctly imprinted on my memory as they might be.”

“That’s so,” said Burnett, pushing aside the curtains that concealed the foot of the wee stair; “I’d forgotten. Well, you’ll meet him to-night, anyhow; he came on the five-five. Holly’s a nice fellow, only he’s so darned over-full of good advice that he keeps you feeling withersome.”

Jack laughed.

“Did he ever give you any advice?” he asked.

“Why?”

“I don’t recollect your taking it.”

“I never take anything,” said Burnett; “I consider it more blessed to give than to receive—as regards good advice anyhow.”

“Who will I have for dinner?” Jack asked presently, glancing around to see if there were any silver tissues or distracting curls in sight.

“Well,” his friend replied, rather hesitatingly, “you must expect to balance up for last night, I reckon.”

“Your cousin, I suppose!”

Burnett nodded.

“She wanted you,” he said. “She’s taken a fancy to you; and she can afford to marry for love,” he added.

“I’m thankful that I can, too,” the other answered fervently.

His friend laughed at the fervor.

“You make me think of her teacher,” he said. “She sings, and when she was sixteen she meant to outrank Patti; she was lots homelier then.”

“Oh, I say!” Jack cried. “I can believe ’most anything, but—”

Burnett laughed and then sobered.

“She was,” he said solemnly; “she really and truly was. And her mother said to her teacher,—there in Dresden: ‘She will be the greatest soprano, won’t she?’ And he said: ‘Madame, she has only that one chance—to be _the_ greatest.’”

Jack laughed.

“But why ‘Lorne’?” he asked suddenly. “Why not ‘Burnett,’ since she’s your uncle’s child?”

“Oh, that’s straight enough; there’s a hyphen there. My uncle died and my aunt married a title. My aunt’s Lady Chiheleywicks, but the family name is Lorne. And you pronounce my aunt’s name Chix.”

“I’m glad I know,” said Jack.

“Oh, we’re great on titles,” said Burnett, modestly. “If the Boers hadn’t killed Col. Rosscott, Betty would have been a Lady, too, some day. But as it is—” he added thoughtfully, “she’s nothing but a widow.”

“‘Nothing but’!” Jack cried indignantly.

“Oh, well,” said Burnett, “of course it’s great, her being a widow—but then she’d have been great the other way too.”

“But if he was English and a colonel,” Jack said suddenly, “he must have been all of—”

“Fifty!” interposed Burnett; “oh, he was! Maybe more, but he dyed his hair. It was a splendid match for her. It isn’t every girl who can get a—”

Their conversation was suddenly cut short by voices, accompanied by a sort of sweet and silky storm of little rustles and the sound of feet—little feet—coming down the great hall. Aunt Mary’s nephew felt himself suddenly wondering if any other fellow present had such a tempest within his bosom as he himself was conscious of attempting to regulate unperceived.

And then, after all, she wasn’t among the influx! Miss Maude, was, though, and he had to go up to her and talk to her; and terribly dull hard labor it was.

While he was rolling the Sisyphus stone of conversation uphill for the sixth or seventh time, Jack noticed a gentleman pass by and throw a more than ordinarily interesting glance their way. He was a very well-built, fairly good-sized man of thirty-five or forty years, with a handsome, uninteresting face and heavy, sleepy dark eyes.

“Who is that?” he asked of his companion, his curiosity supplementing his wish that she would begin to bear her share of the burden of her entertainment.

“Don’t you know?” she said in surprise. “That’s Mr. Holloway. He’s just come. Oh, he’s so horrid! I think he’s just too awfully horrid for any use.”

“Why?”

“Because he does such mean things. I just know Bob must have told you how he treated me. Bob’s always telling it. Surely he’s told you. It’s his favorite story.”

“No, never,” said Jack (his eyes riveted on the staircase); “he never told me. But do tell me. I’ll enjoy hearing your side of it.”

“But I haven’t any side. It’s just Horace Holloway’s meanness. There’s nothing funny.”

“But tell me anyway.”

“Do you really want to hear?”

“Indeed, I do.”

“Well, it’s just that we were up in the mountains, and I was rowing myself, and the boat didn’t go well, and Mr. Holloway came down off the hotel piazza and called to me that she needed ballast, and—and I said: ‘Is that the trouble?’ And he said: ‘Yes, row ashore, and I’ll ballast you.’ And so, of course I rowed ashore to get him, and (of course, I supposed he meant himself), and when I was up by the dock he picked up a great stone and dropped it in, and shoved me off, and called after me: ‘She’ll go better now,’ and—everyone laughed!”

Miss Lome stopped, breathless.

“I never would have believed it of him,” Jack exclaimed, turning to see where Holloway kept his sense of humor; but just as his eye fell upon the latter, the latter’s eyes altered and suddenly became so bright and intent that his observer involuntarily turned his own gaze quickly in the same direction.

It was Mrs. Rosscott who was approaching, all in cerise with lines of Chantilly lace sweeping about her. It seemed a cruelty to every woman present that she should be so beautiful. Jack wanted to fly and fall at her feet, but he couldn’t, of course—he was tied to her hyphenated cousin.

But Holloway went forward and greeted her with all possible _empressement_, and the man who was so much his junior felt an awful weight of youth upon him as he saw her led out of his sight.

“I think dear Betty will marry Mr. Holloway,” her cousin chirped blandly, thus settling her fate forever. “He came over in her party, you know, and—she’s always been fond of him.”

Jack suddenly recollected how Mrs. Rosscott had commented on the terrible tendency to land upon “and,” and wondered why he had never noticed before how disagreeable said tendency was.

(Going to marry Holloway!)

“But, then, dear Cousin Betty’s such a coquette that no one can ever tell whom she does like. She’s very insincere.”

Jack twisted uneasily. If there was any comfort to be derived from Miss Lorne’s last speech, it was certainly of a most chilly sort.

(Probably going to marry Holloway!)

“Now, I think it’s too bad, when there are so many simple, sweet girls in the world, that men seem to adore those that flirt like dear Cousin Betty. I don’t approve of flirting anyway. I wouldn’t flirt for anything. I don’t want to break men’s hearts.”

“That’s awfully good of you,” Jack said, looking eagerly to where Holloway and Mrs. Rosscott stood together.

“Oh, no it isn’t,” said Miss Lorne, “I don’t take any credit for it—I was born so. Dear Betty was a regular flirt when she was ever so small, but I never was. I’m sincere and I can’t take any credit for it. I was born so.”

Holloway was talking and Mrs. Rosscott’s eyes were uplifted to his. Jack was sure there was adoration in them. He knew Holloway was in love with her. How could he be a man and help it. Oh, it was damnable—unbearable.

He stood up suddenly. He couldn’t help it. He was crazed, maddened, choked, stifled. The fates must intervene and rescue his reason or else—

There was a blessed sound—the announcing of dinner.

Later there was music in the great white salon where the organ was. Maude Lome sang, and the man with the monocle accompanied her on the organ. Mrs. Rosscott sat on a divan between Holloway and General Jiggs. Jack was left out in the cold.

(Surely in love with Holloway!)

It was only twenty-six hours since he had first met her, and he hated to consider his life as unalterably blasted, or to even give up the fight. Nevertheless, whenever he looked across the room he saw fresh signs of the most awful kind. Even the way that she didn’t trouble to trouble over the one man, but devoted herself to General Jiggs, was in itself a very bad portent. Well, such was life and one must bear it somehow and be a man. Probably he would suffer less after the first five or ten years—he hoped so at any rate. But, great heavens, what a fearful prospect until those first five or ten years were gone by!

Finally he went up to his own room and put on another collar and sat down at the open window and thought about it for a good while all quiet and alone by himself. After that he went back downstairs.

She was gone, and Holloway, too. He felt freshly unhappy. When you come to consider, it was so damned unjust for one man to be thirty-five while another—just as decent a fellow in every way—was in college. He—

A hand touched his arm.

He turned from where he was standing in the window recess, and looked into her eyes.

“I’m very wicked, am I not?” she asked, looking up at him so straight and honest.

“I can’t admit that,” he replied.

“But I am. I know it myself. What Bob told you was all true. I’m a heartless wretch.”

She spoke so earnestly that his heart sank lower and lower.

“I wanted to speak to you about to-morrow morning,” she said, after a little pause. “You know we were going to drive at ten together, and—and I wondered if—you see, Mr. Holloway’s an old friend, and he’s had so much to tell me to-night, and he isn’t half through—”

She was drawing him with a chain, a hair chain, which she had woven out of her eyelashes in the twinkling of an eye (either eye).

He felt himself helpless—and choked.

“Of course I don’t mind. You go with him. It’s quite one to me.”

She gave a tiny little start.

“Oh, I didn’t mean that at all,” she cried. “I meant—I meant—you see it’s all been a little tiring—and to-morrow’s Sunday anyway and I—I Wanted to—to ask you if we couldn’t go out at eleven instead of ten?”

She looked so sweetly questioning, and his relief was so great, and his joy—

(Probably don’t care a rap for Holloway!)

—so intense, that he could hardly refrain from seizing her in his arms.

But he only seized her little hand instead and pressed it fervently to his lips. When he raised his eyes she was smiling, and her smile filled him with happiness.

“You’re such a boy!” she said softly, and turned and left him there in the window recess alone again,—but this time he didn’t care.

Chapter Seven Developments

It was during that drive the next morning that Jack buoyed up by memories of Saturday and hopes of coming Saturdays, poured out the history of his life at Mrs. Rosscott’s knees. He told her the whole story of Aunt Mary, and _his_ side of the cat, the cabman, and Kalamazoo. It interested her, for she had arrived too recently to have had the full details in the newspapers beforehand, but when he spoke of Aunt Mary’s last letter she grew large-eyed and shook her head gravely.

“You will have to be very good now,” she said seriously.

“Why?” he asked. “Just to keep from being disinherited? That wouldn’t be so awful.”

“Wouldn’t it be awful to you?” she asked, turning her bright eyes upon him. “What could be worse?”

“Things,” he said very vaguely.

Then she touched up the cob a little; and, after a minute or two, as she said nothing, he continued:

“I almost fancy quitting college and going to work. I was thinking about it last night.”

She touched up the cob a little more, and remained silent.

Finally he said:

“What would you think of my doing that?”

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “You see, I’m a great philosopher. I never fret or worry, because I regard it as useless; similarly, I never rebel at the way fate shapes my life—I regard that as something past helping. I believe in predestination; do you?”

She turned and looked at him so seriously—so unlike her _riante_ self—that he felt startled, and did not know what to say for a minute.

Then:

“I don’t know,” he said slowly; “I don’t know that I dare to. It rather startles me to think that maybe all of our future is laid out now.”

“It doesn’t startle me,” she said. “It seems to me the natural plan of the universe. I believe that everything that crosses our path—down to the tiniest gnat—comes there in the fulfillment of a purpose.”

“I’m sure that all the mosquitoes that ever crossed my path came there in the fulfillment of a purpose,” Jack interrupted. “I never doubted _that_.”

She smiled a little.

“It’s the same with people,” she went on.

“Only less painful,” he interrupted again.

“Sometimes not,” she said, with a look that silenced him. “Sometimes much more so—my Cousin Maude, for example.”

“Hip, hip, hurrah for the mosquito!” he murmured. They laughed softly together. Then she grew earnest, and looked so grave that he became serious too.

“There is always a purpose,” she said, with a touch of some feeling which he had never guessed at. “If you and I have met, it is because we are to have some influence over one another. I can’t just see how; I can’t form any idea—”

“I can,” he said eagerly.

She looked up so suddenly and steadily that he was silent.

“Do not let us play any longer,” she said. “Let us be in earnest.”

“But I am in earnest,” he asseverated.

“You don’t know what I mean,” she went on very gently. “You’re in college. Let’s fight it out on those lines if it takes all summer.”

He looked up into her face and loved her better than ever for the frank kindliness that shone in her eyes.

“All right, if you say so,” he vowed.

“I do say so,” she said. “I like to see men stick it through in college if they begin. I like to see people finish up every one of life’s jobs that they set out on.”

“But I’m coming to see you in town, you know,” he went on with great apparent irrelevance.

She laughed merrily.

“Yes, surely. You must promise me that.—No,” she stopped and looked thoughtful, “I’ll tell you what I want you to promise me. Promise me that you’ll come once a week or else write me why you can’t come. Will you?”

“You can’t suppose that you’ll ever see my handwriting under such circumstances—can you?” Jack asked.

She laughed again.

“Is it a promise?”

“Yes, it’s a promise.”

Oh, joy unmeasured in the time of spring! No other February like that had ever been for them—nor ever would be. The drive came to an end, the day came to an end, but the good-nights, which were good-bys, too, were not so fraught with hopelessness as he had dreaded, for the promise asked and given paved a broad road illuminated by the most hopeful kind of stars,—a broad road leading straight from college to town,—and his fancy showed him a figure treading it often. A figure that was his own.

Chapter Eight The Resolution He Took

That first meeting was in February, you know, and by the last of April it had been followed by so many others that Burnett remarked one day to his chum:

“Say, aren’t you going a little faster than auntie’ll stand for?”

Jack turned in surprise.

“I never went so straight in my life before,” he exclaimed, not in indignation but in astonishment.

“I didn’t mean that,” said Burnett. “Perhaps instead of ‘auntie’ I should have said ‘Betty.’”

Jack hoisted the colors of Harvard, and was silent.

“I warned you at first that that was Tangle town,” his friend went on. “Don’t suppose I’m saying anything against her—or against you; but she’s just as much to ten other men as she is to you, and they all are old enough to carry lots of weight.”

“And I suppose I’m not,” Jack answered, going over by the fireplace. “I know that as well as anyone, of course.”

“_Natürlich_,” said Burnett, with conclusiveness that was not meant to be cruel, yet cut like a two edged knife.

There was silence in the room. Jack stood by the chimney-piece, his hands upraised to rest upon its lofty shelf, his head dropped forward, and his eyes fixed on the empty blackness below.

“I wonder,” he said at last, “I wonder what will become of me if—if—”

He stopped.

Burnett didn’t speak.

“I wonder if she thinks of me as a boy,” the young man continued. “I wonder if she’s so good to me because I’m her youngest brother’s friend.”

Burnett did not comment on this speech.

“I don’t know what to do,” the other said. “When I first met her I wanted to cut college and get out in the world and go to work like a man. I told her so. But she wanted me to stay in college, and as it was the first thing she’d ever wanted of me, I did it. I’d do anything she asked me. I’ve quit drinking. I’m going at everything as hard as it’s in me to go; but—I don’t know—I feel—I feel as if it isn’t me—it’s just because she wants me to, and, do you know, old man, it frightens me to think how—if she—if she went out of my—my life—”

He stopped and his broken phrases were not continued to any ending.

Another long silence ensued.

It was finally terminated by the brother’s saying:

“You must confess, old man, that you aren’t fixed so as to be able to say one really serious word to any woman—unless it is, ‘Wait.’”

“I know that,” Jack answered; “but I suppose—”

“She’d be taking so many chances,” the friend interrupted. “A man in college is never the real thing. You’d better give it up.”

Then the other whirled about and faced him.

“Give it up, did you say?” he asked almost angrily.

“Yes, that’s what.”

For a minute they looked at one another. Then:

“I shall never give it up,” the lover said very slowly and steadily—“never, until she gives me up.”

Burnett sucked in his breath with a sudden compression of his lips.

“All right,” he said, not unkindly; “but I don’t believe you’ll ever get her, and that’s flat. There are too many being entered for that race, and long before you and I get out of here she’ll be Mrs. Somebody Else.”

Jack stared at him as if he hardly heard, and then suddenly he stepped nearer and spoke.

“Did she ask you to have this talk with me?”

“No,” said the brother in surprise, “she never says anything about you to me.”

A look of relief fled across his friend’s face, and then a look of resolution succeeded it.

“I’m not going to be discouraged,” he said; “not for a while, at any rate.”

“You’d better be.”

Jack laughed. The laugh sounded a trifle hollow, but still it was a laugh, and that in itself was a triumph of which none but himself might ever measure the extent.

Because in that moment he decided to lay the whole case before her the next time that he went to town, and the coming to a resolution was a relief from the uncertainty that clouded his days and nights—even if a further black curtain of darkest doubt hung before the possibilities of what her answer might be.

Chapter Nine The Downfall of Hope

It was on a Saturday about the middle of May that Jack came to town, his mind well braced with love and arguments, and his main thoughts being that when he returned something would be settled.

It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, and at five in the afternoon both of the drawing-room windows of Mrs. Rosscott’s house were wide open, and the lace curtains were taking the breeze like little sails.

Just as Jack mounted the steps, the door opened, and a plainly dressed, unattractive-looking man was let out. The servant who did the letting out saw Jack and let him in without closing the door between the egress of the one and the ingress of the other. So he entered without ringing, and, as he was very well known and intensely popular with all of Mrs. Rosscott’s servants, the man invited him to walk up unannounced, since he himself was just “bringing in the tea.”

Jack went upstairs, and because the carpet was of thickly piled velvet and his boots were the boots of a well-shod gentleman, he made no noise whatever in the so doing.

There were double parlors above stairs in the domicile which Burnett’s sister had taken until July, and they were furnished in the most correct and trying mode of Louis XIV. The chairs were gilt and very uncomfortable. The ornaments were all straight up and down and made in such shapes that there was no place to flick off cigarette ashes anywhere. Nothing could be pulled up to anything else and there was not a single good place to rest one’s elbows anywhere. The only saving grace in the situation was that after five minutes or so Mrs. Rosscott invariably suggested removal to the library which lay beyond—a very different species of apartment where no mode at all prevailed except the terrible _démodé_ thing known as comfort. To prevent her visitors, when seated (for the five minutes aforementioned) amid the correct carving of French art, from looking longingly through at the easy-chairs of American manufacture, Mrs. Rosscott had ordered that the blue velvet portières which hung between should never be pushed aside, and it was owing to this order that Jack, entering the drawing-room, heard voices, but could not see into the library beyond. Also it was owing to this order that those in the library could not see or hear Jack.

The result was that the young man, finding the drawing-room unoccupied, was just crossing toward the blue velvet curtains, intending to wait in the library until the returning servant should advise him of the whereabouts of his mistress, when he was stopped by suddenly hearing a voice—her voice—crying (and laughing at the same time)—

“Kisses barred! Kisses barred!”

It may be understood that had Mrs. Rosscott known that anyone was within hearing she certainly would never have made any such speech, and it may be further understood that, had whoever was with her, also mistrusted the close propinquity of another man, he would never have replied (as he did reply):

“Certainly,” the same being spoken in a most calm and careless tone.

Jack, the eavesdropper, stood transfixed at the voices and speeches, and forgot every other consideration in the overwhelming sickness of soul which overcame him that instant. All his other soul-sicknesses were trifles compared to this one, and the world—his world—their world—seemed to revolve and whirl and turn upside down, as he steadied himself against a spindle-legged cabinet and felt its spindle-legs trembling in sympathy with his own.

“Darling,” said Holloway, a second or two later (and this time his voice was not calm and careless, but deep and impassioned), “the letter was very sweet, and if you knew how I longed to take the tired little girl to my bosom and comfort her troubles, and replace them by joys!”

“Will that day ever come, do you think?” Mrs. Rosscott answered, in low tones, which nevertheless were most painfully clear and distinct in the next room.

“It must,” Holloway replied, “just as surely as that I hold this dear little hand—”

But Jack never knew more. He had heard enough—more than enough. Four thousand times too much. He turned and went out of the rooms, back down the stairs and out of the door, closed it noiselessly behind him, and found himself in a world which, although bright and sunny to all the rest of mankind, had turned dark, lonely, and cheerless to him.

At first he hardly knew what to do with himself, he was so altogether used up by the discovery just made. He drifted up and down some unknown streets for an hour or two—or stood still on corners—he never was very sure which. And then at last he went downtown and took a drink in a half-dazed way; and because it was quite two months since his last indulgence, its suggestion was potent.

The pity—or rather, the apparent pity—of what followed!

Burnett was Sundaying at the ancestral castle; and Burnett wasn’t the warning sort, anyhow. He was always tow and pitch for any species of flame. So his absence counted for nothing in the crisis.

And what ensued was a crisis—a crisis with a vengeance.

That tear upon which Aunt Mary’s nephew went was something lurid and awful. It lasted until Monday, and then its owner returned to college, as ill of body and as embittered of spirit as it was in him to be. The lightsome devil who had ruled him up to his meeting with Mrs. Rosscott resumed its sway with terrible force. The authorities showed a tendency to patience because young Denham had appeared to reform lately and had been working hard; but young Denham felt no thankful sentiments for their leniency, and proved his position shortly.

There was a man named Tweedwell whom circumstances threw directly in the path of destruction. Tweedwell was an inoffensive mortal who was studying for the ministry. He was progressive in his ideas, and believed that a clergyman, to hold a great influence, should know his world. He thought that knowledge of the world was to be gained by skirting the outside edge of every species of worldliness. The result of this course of action was not what it should have been, for Tweedwell was an easy mark for all who wanted fun, and the consciousness of his innocence so little accelerated the pace at which he got out of the way that he was always being called to account for what he hadn’t done.

The Saturday night after his Saturday in town, Jack concocted a piece of deviltry which was as dangerous as it was foolish. The result was that an explosion took place, and the author of the gun-powder plot had all the skin on both hands blistered. Burnett, in escaping, fell and broke his collarbone and two ribs. The house in which the affair took place caught fire, and was badly damaged. And Tweedwell was arrested on the strongest kind of circumstantial evidence, and had to answer for the whole. Naturally, in the investigation that followed, the two who were guilty had to confess or see the candidate for the ministry disgraced forever.

The result of their confession was that Burnett’s father, a jovial, peppery old gentleman—we all know the kind—lost his patience and wrote his son that he’d better not come home again that year. But Aunt Mary lost her temper much more completely and the result, as affecting Jack, was awful.

She might not have acted as she did had the disastrous news arrived either a week later or a week earlier; but it came just in the middle of a discouraging ten days’ downpour, which had caused a dam to break and a chain of valuable cranberry bogs to be drowned out for that year. The cranberry bogs were especially dear to their owner’s heart.

“Why can’t they drain ’em?” she had asked Lucinda, who was particularly nutcracker-like in appearance since her quarantine episode.

“’Pears like they’re lower’n everywhere else,” Lucinda answered, her words sounding as if she had sharpened them on a grindstone.

Aunt Mary bit her lip and frowned at the rain. She felt mad all the way through, and longed to take it out on someone.

Ten minutes after Joshua arrived with the mail and the mail bore one ominous letter. Joshua felt something was wrong before the fact was assured.

“She wants the mail,” Lucinda said, coming to the door with her hand out as usual.

“She’ll get the mail,” said Joshua, and as he spoke he gave the seeker after tidings a blood-curdling wink.

“There isn’t a telegram in one o’ the letters, is there?” Lucinda asked, much appalled by the wink.

“No, there isn’t no telegram in none o’ the letters,” said Joshua.

“Joshua Whittlesey, I do believe you was born to drive saints mad. What _is_ the matter?”

“Nothin’ ain’t the matter as I know of.”

“Then what in Kingdom Come did you wink for?”

“I winked,” said Joshua meaningly, “cause I expect it’ll be a good while before we’ll feel like winkin’ again.”

Lucinda gave him a look in which curiosity and aggravation fought catch-as-catch-can. Then she turned and went in with the letters.

Aunt Mary was sitting stonily staring at the rain.

“I thought you’d gone to take a drive with Joshua,” she said coldly. “Well, ’s long ’s you’re back I’ll be glad to have my mail. Most folks like to get their mail as soon as it comes an’ I—Mercy on us!”

It was the letter from the authorities enclosed in one from Mr. Stebbins.

Lucinda stood bolt upright before her mistress.

“What’s happened?” she yelled breathlessly, after a few seconds of the direst kind of silence had loaded the atmosphere while the letter was being carefully read.

Then:

“Happened!—” said Aunt Mary, transfixing the terrible typewritten communication with a yet more terrible look of determination. “Happened!—Well, jus’ what I expected ’s happened an’ jus’ what nobody expects ’ll happen now. Lucinda, you run like you was paid for it and tell Joshua not to unharness. Don’t stop to open your mouth. You’ll need your breath before you get to the barn. Scurry!”

Lucinda scurried. She splashed and spattered down through the lane that led to Joshua’s kingdom with a vigor that was commendable in one of her age.

“She says ‘don’t unharness,’” she panted, bouncing in through the doorway just as Joshua was slowly and carefully folding the lap-robe in the crease to which it had become habituated.

Joshua continued to fold.

“Then I won’t unharness,” he said calmly. He hung the robe over the line that was stretched to hang robes over and Lucinda gasped for wind with which to inflate further conversation.

“She says what nobody expects is goin’ to happen,” she panted as soon as she could.

“What nobody expects is always happenin’ where he’s concerned,” said Joshua.

“I s’pose he’s in some new row,” said Lucinda.

“I’m sure he is,” said Joshua, “an’ if you don’t go back to her pretty quick you won’t be no better off.”

Lucinda turned away and returned to the house. She found Aunt Mary still staring at the letters with the same concentrated fury as before.

“Well, is Joshua a’comin’ to the door?” she asked when she saw her maid before her.

“You didn’t say for him to come to the door,” Lucinda howled, “you said for him to stay harnessed.”

Aunt Mary appeared on the verge of ignition.

“Lucinda,” she said, “every week I live under the same roof with you your brains strike me ’s some shrunk from the week before. What in Heaven’s name should I want Joshua to stay harnessed in the barn for? I want him to go for Mr. Stebbins an’ I want him to understand ’t if Mr. Stebbins can’t come he’s got to come just the same’s if he could anyhow. I may seem quiet to you, Lucinda, but if I do, it only shows all over again how little you know. This is a awful day an’ if you knew how awful you’d be half way back to the barn right now. I ain’t triflin’—I’m meanin’ every word. Every syllable. Every letter.”

Lucinda fled out into the open again. Her footprints of the time before were little oblong ponds now and she laid out a new course parallel to their splashes. She found Joshua sponging the dasher.

“She wants you to go straight out again.”

Joshua flung the sponge into the pail.

“Then I’ll go straight out again,” he said, moving toward the horse’s head.

“You’re to bring Mr. Stebbins whether he can come or not.”

“He’ll come,” said Joshua; and then he backed the horse so suddenly that the buggy wheel nearly went over Lucinda.

“She says this is an awful day—” began Lucinda.

Joshua got into the buggy and tucked the rubber blanket around himself.

“She says—”

Joshua drove out of the barn and away.

Lucinda went slowly back to the house. Aunt Mary had ceased to glare at the letter and was now glaring at the rain instead.

“Lucinda,” she said “I’ll thank you not to ever mention my nephew to me again. I’ve took a vow to never speak his name again myself. By no means—not at all—never.”

“Which nephew?” shrieked Lucinda.

Aunt Mary’s eyes snapped.

“Jack!” she said, with an accent that seemed to split the short word in two.

After a little she spoke again.

“Lucinda, it’s all been owin’ to the city an’ this last is all city. ’F I cared a rap what happened to him after this I’d never let him go near a place over two thousand again as long as he lived. It’s no use tryin’ to explain things to you, Lucinda, because it never has been any use an’ never will be—an’ anyway, I’m done with it all. I sh’ll want you for a witness when I’m through with Mr. Stebbins, and then you can get some marmalade out for tea an’ we’ll all live in peace hereafter.”

Joshua returned with Mr. Stebbins and the latter gentleman went to work with a will and willed Jack out of Aunt Mary’s. Later Joshua took him home again. Lucinda got the marmalade out of the cellar and Aunt Mary had it with her tea. It was a bitter tea—unsugared indeed—and the days that followed matched.

Chapter Ten The Woes of the Disinherited.

It was some days later on in the world’s history that Holloway was calling on Bertha Rosscott.

They were sitting in that comfortable library previously referred to and were sweetly unaware that any untoward series of incidents had ever led to an invasion of their privacy.

Holloway lay well back in a sleepy-hollow chair and looked indolently, lazily handsome; his hostess was up on—well up on the divan, and he had the full benefit of her admirable bottines and their dainty heels and buckles.

“Honestly,” he said, looking her over with a gaze that was at once roving and well content, “honestly, I think that every time I see you, you appear more attractive than the time before.”

“It’s very nice of you to say so,” she replied. “And, of course, I believe you, for every time that I get a new gown I think that very same thing myself. Still, I do regard it as strange if I look nicely to-day, for I’ve been crying like a baby all the morning.”

“You crying! And why?”

She raised her eyes to his.

“Such bad news!” she said simply.

“From where? Of whom?”

“From mamma, about Bob.”

“Have _his_ wounds proved serious?” Holloway looked slightly distressed as was proper.

“It isn’t that. It’s papa. Papa has forbidden him the house. He’s very, very angry.”

Holloway looked relieved.

“Your father won’t stay angry long, and you know it,” he said. “Just think how often he has lost his temper over the boys and how often he’s found it again.”

“It isn’t just Bob,” said Mrs. Rosscott. “I’ve someone else on my mind, too.”

“Who, pray?”

“His friend.”

“Young Denham?”

“Yes.”

With that she threw her head up and looked very straightly at her caller whose visage shaded ever so slightly in spite of himself.

“Have his wounds proved serious?” he asked, smiling, but unable to altogether do away with a species of parenthetical inflection in his voice.

“It wasn’t over his wounds that I cried.”

“Did you really cry at all for him?”

“I cried more for him than I did for Bob,” she admitted boldly.

“He is a fortunate boy! But why the tears in his case?”

“I felt so badly to be disappointed in him.”

“Did you expect to work a miracle there, my dear? Did you think to reform such an inveterate young reprobate with a glance?”

“I’m not sure that I ever asked myself either of those questions,” she replied, slowly; “but he promised me something, and I expected him to keep his word.”

“Men don’t keep such promises, Bertha,” the visitor said. “You shouldn’t have expected it.”

“I don’t know why not.”

“Because a man who drinks will drink again.”

“I didn’t refer to drinking,” she said quietly. “It was quite another thing.”

“Ah!”

She looked down at her rings and seemed to consider how much of her confidence she should give him, and the consideration led her to look up presently and say: