erties.
Margaret became a horror to herself. At times it seemed to her that she was in the way of fairly losing her own identity. It mattered little that Camille and Jack were very kind to her, that they showed her the nice things which her terrible earn- ings had enabled them to have. She sat in her two chairs — the two chairs proved a most successful advertisement — with her two kid-cushiony hands clenched in her pink spangled lap, and she suffered agony of soul, which made her inner self stern and terrible, behind that great pink mask of face. And nobody realized until one sultry day when the show opened at a village in a pocket of green hills — indeed, its name was Greenhill — and Sydney Lord went to see it.
Margaret, who had schooled herself to look upon her audience as if they were not, suddenly compre- hended among them another soul who understood her own. She met the eyes of the man, and a won- derful comfort, as of a cool breeze blowing over the face of clear water, came to her. She knew that the man understood. She knew that she had his fullest sympathy. She saw also a comrade in the toils of comic tragedy, for Sydney Lord was in the same case. He was a mountain of flesh. As a matter of fact, had he not been known in Greenhill and respected as a man of weight of character as well as of body, and of an old family, he would have rivaled Mar- garet. Beside him sat an elderly woman, sweet- faced, slightly bent as to her slender shoulders, as if with a chronic attitude of submission. She was Sydney’s widowed sister, Ellen Waters. She lived with her brother and kept his house, and had no will other than his.
Sydney Lord and his sister remained when the rest of the audience had drifted out, after the privileged hand-shakes with the queen of the show. Every time a coarse, rustic hand reached familiarly after Margaret’s, Sydney shrank.
He motioned his sister to remain seated when he approached the stage. Jack Desmond, who had been exploiting Margaret, gazed at him with admiring curiosity. Sydney waved him away with a commanding gesture. “I wish to speak to her a moment. Pray leave the tent,” he said, and Jack obeyed. People always obeyed Sydney Lord.
Sydney stood before Margaret, and he saw the clear crystal, which was herself, within all the flesh, clad in tawdry raiment, and she knew that he saw it.
“Good God!” said Sydney, “you are a lady!”
He continued to gaze at her, and his eyes, large and brown, became blurred; at the same time his mouth tightened.
“How came you to be in such a place as this?” demanded Sydney. He spoke almost as if he were angry with her.
Margaret explained briefly.
“It is an outrage,” declared Sydney. He said it, however, rather absently. He was reflecting. “Where do you live?” he asked.
“Here.”
“You mean –?”
“They make up a bed for me here, after the people have gone.”
“And I suppose you had — before this — a com- fortable house.”
“The house which my grandfather Lee owned, the old Lee mansion-house, before we went to the city. It was a very fine old Colonial house,” ex- plained Margaret, in her finely modulated voice.
“And you had a good room?”
“The southeast chamber had always been mine. It was very large, and the furniture was old Spanish mahogany.”
“And now –” said Sydney.
“Yes,” said Margaret. She looked at him, and her serious blue eyes seemed to see past him. “It will not last,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I try to learn a lesson. I am a child in the school of God. My lesson is one that always ends in peace.”
“Good God!” said Sydney.
He motioned to his sister, and Ellen approached in a frightened fashion. Her brother could do no wrong, but this was the unusual, and alarmed her.
“This lady –” began Sydney.
“Miss Lee,” said Margaret. “I was never mar- ried. I am Miss Margaret Lee.”
“This,” said Sydney, “is my sister Ellen, Mrs. Waters. Ellen, I wish you to meet Miss Lee.”
Ellen took into her own Margaret’s hand, and said feebly that it was a beautiful day and she hoped Miss Lee found Greenhill a pleasant place to — visit.
Sydney moved slowly out of the tent and found Jack Desmond. He was standing near with Camille, who looked her best in a pale-blue summer silk and a black hat trimmed with roses. Jack and Camille never really knew how the great man had managed, but presently Margaret had gone away with him and his sister.
Jack and Camille looked at each other.
“Oh, Jack, ought you to have let her go?” said Camille.
“What made you let her go?” asked Jack.
“I — don’t know. I couldn’t say anything. That man has a tremendous way with him. Goodness!”
“He is all right here in the place, anyhow,” said Jack. “They look up to him. He is a big-bug here. Comes of a family like Margaret’s, though he hasn’t got much money. Some chaps were braggin’ that they had a bigger show than her right here, and I found out.”
“Suppose,” said Camille, “Margaret does not come back?”
“He could not keep her without bein’ arrested,” declared Jack, but he looked uneasy. He had, how- ever, looked uneasy for some time. The fact was, Margaret had been very gradually losing weight. Moreover, she was not well. That very night, after the show was over, Bill Stark, the little dark man, had a talk with the Desmonds about it.
“Truth is, before long, if you don’t look out, you’ll have to pad her,” said Bill; “and giants don’t amount to a row of pins after that begins.”
Camille looked worried and sulky. “She ain’t very well, anyhow,” said she. “I ain’t going to kill Margaret.”
“It’s a good thing she’s got a chance to have a night’s rest in a house,” said Bill Stark.
“The fat man has asked her to stay with him and his sister while the show is here,” said Jack.
“The sister invited her,” said Camille, with a little stiffness. She was common, but she had lived with Lees, and her mother had married a Lee. She knew what was due Margaret, and also due herself.
“The truth is,” said Camille, “this is an awful sort of life for a woman like Margaret. She and her folks were never used to anything like it.”
“Why didn’t you make your beauty husband hustle and take care of her and you, then?” de- manded Bill, who admired Camille, and disliked her because she had no eyes for him.
“My husband has been unfortunate. He has done the best he could,” responded Camille. “Come, Jack; no use talking about it any longer. Guess Margaret will pick up. Come along. I’m tired out.”
That night Margaret Lee slept in a sweet chamber with muslin curtains at the windows, in a massive old mahogany bed, much like hers which had been sacrificed at an auction sale. The bed-linen was linen, and smelled of lavender. Margaret was too happy to sleep. She lay in the cool, fragrant sheets and was happy, and convinced of the presence of the God to whom she had prayed. All night Sydney Lord sat down-stairs in his book-walled sanctum and studied over the situation. It was a crucial one. The great psychological moment of Sydney Lord’s life for knight-errantry had arrived. He studied the thing from every point of view. There was no romance about it. These were hard, sordid, tragic, ludicrous facts with which he had to deal. He knew to a nicety the agonies which Margaret suffered. He knew, because of his own capacity for sufferings of like stress. “And she is a woman and a lady,” he said, aloud.
If Sydney had been rich enough, the matter would have been simple. He could have paid Jack and Camille enough to quiet them, and Margaret could have lived with him and his sister and their two old servants. But he was not rich; he was even poor. The price to be paid for Margaret’s liberty was a bitter one, but it was that or nothing. Sydney faced it. He looked about the room. To him the walls lined with the dull gleams of old books were lovely. There was an oil portrait of his mother over the mantel-shelf. The weather was warm now, and there was no need for a hearth fire, but how ex- quisitely home-like and dear that room could be when the snow drove outside and there was the leap of flame on the hearth! Sydney was a scholar and a gentleman. He had led a gentle and sequestered life. Here in his native village there were none to gibe and sneer. The contrast of the traveling show would be as great for him as it had been for Margaret, but he was the male of the species, and she the female. Chivalry, racial, harking back to the begin- ning of nobility in the human, to its earliest dawn, fired Sydney. The pale daylight invaded the study. Sydney, as truly as any knight of old, had girded himself, and with no hope, no thought of reward, for the battle in the eternal service of the strong for the weak, which makes the true worth of the strong.
There was only one way. Sydney Lord took it. His sister was spared the knowledge of the truth for a long while. When she knew, she did not lament; since Sydney had taken the course, it must be right. As for Margaret, not knowing the truth, she yielded. She was really on the verge of illness. Her spirit was of too fine a strain to enable her body to endure long. When she was told that she was to remain with Sydney’s sister while Sydney went away on business, she made no objection. A wonderful sense of relief, as of wings of healing being spread under her despair, was upon her. Camille came to bid her good-by.
“I hope you have a nice visit in this lovely house,” said Camille, and kissed her. Camille was astute, and to be trusted. She did not betray Sydney’s confidence. Sydney used a disguise — a dark wig over his partially bald head and a little make-up — and he traveled about with the show and sat on three chairs, and shook hands with the gaping crowd, and was curiously happy. It was discomfort; it was ignominy; it was maddening to support by the exhibition of his physical deformity a perfectly worthless young couple like Jack and Camille Des- mond, but it was all superbly ennobling for the man himself.
Always as he sat on his three chairs, immense, grotesque — the more grotesque for his splendid dig- nity of bearing — there was in his soul of a gallant gentleman the consciousness of that other, whom he was shielding from a similar ordeal. Compassion and generosity, so great that they comprehended love itself and excelled its highest type, irradiated the whole being of the fat man exposed to the gaze of his inferiors. Chivalry, which rendered him almost god-like, strengthened him for his task. Sydney thought always of Margaret as distinct from her physical self, a sort of crystalline, angelic soul, with no encumbrance of earth. He achieved a purely spiritual conception of her. And Margaret, living again her gentle lady life, was likewise ennobled by a gratitude which transformed her. Always a clear and beautiful soul, she gave out new lights of character like a jewel in the sun. And she also thought of Sydney as distinct from his physical self. The consciousness of the two human beings, one of the other, was a consciousness as of two wonderful lines of good and beauty, moving for ever parallel, separate, and inseparable in an eternal harmony of spirit.
CORONATION
CORONATION
JIM BENNET had never married. He had
passed middle life, and possessed considerable property. Susan Adkins kept house for him. She was a widow and a very distant relative. Jim had two nieces, his brother’s daughters. One, Alma Beecher, was married; the other, Amanda, was not. The nieces had naively grasping views concerning their uncle and his property. They stated freely that they considered him unable to care for it; that a guardian should be appointed and the property be theirs at once. They consulted Lawyer Thomas Hopkinson with regard to it; they discoursed at length upon what they claimed to be an idiosyn- crasy of Jim’s, denoting failing mental powers.
“He keeps a perfect slew of cats, and has a coal fire for them in the woodshed all winter,” said Amanda.
“Why in thunder shouldn’t he keep a fire in the woodshed if he wants to?” demanded Hopkinson. “I know of no law against it. And there isn’t a law in the country regulating the number of cats a man can keep.” Thomas Hopkinson, who was an old friend of Jim’s, gave his prominent chin an up- ward jerk as he sat in his office arm-chair before his clients.
“There is something besides cats,” said Alma
“What?”
“He talks to himself.”
“What in creation do you expect the poor man to do? He can’t talk to Susan Adkins about a blessed thing except tidies and pincushions. That woman hasn’t a thought in her mind outside her soul’s salvation and fancy-work. Jim has to talk once in a while to keep himself a man. What if he does talk to himself? I talk to myself. Next thing you will want to be appointed guardian over me, Amanda.”
Hopkinson was a bachelor, and Amanda flushed angrily.
“He wasn’t what I call even gentlemanly,” she told Alma, when the two were on their way home.
“I suppose Tom Hopkinson thought you were setting your cap at him,” retorted Alma. She rel- ished the dignity of her married state, and enjoyed giving her spinster sister little claws when occasion called. However, Amanda had a temper of her own, and she could claw back.
“YOU needn’t talk,” said she. “You only took Joe Beecher when you had given up getting anybody better. You wanted Tom Hopkinson yourself. I haven’t forgotten that blue silk dress you got and wore to meeting. You needn’t talk. You know you got that dress just to make Tom look at you, and he didn’t. You needn’t talk.”
“I wouldn’t have married Tom Hopkinson if he had been the only man on the face of the earth,” declared Alma with dignity; but she colored hotly.
Amanda sniffed. “Well, as near as I can find out Uncle Jim can go on talking to himself and keeping cats, and we can’t do anything,” said she.
When the two women were home, they told Alma’s husband, Joe Beecher, about their lack of success. They were quite heated with their walk and excite- ment. “I call it a shame,” said Alma. “Anybody knows that poor Uncle Jim would be better off with a guardian.”
“Of course,” said Amanda. “What man that had a grain of horse sense would do such a crazy thing as to keep a coal fire in a woodshed?”
“For such a slew of cats, too,” said Alma, nodding fiercely.
Alma’s husband, Joe Beecher, spoke timidly and undecidedly in the defense. “You know,” he said, “that Mrs. Adkins wouldn’t have those cats in the house, and cats mostly like to sit round where it’s warm.”
His wife regarded him. Her nose wrinkled. “I suppose next thing YOU’LL be wanting to have a cat round where it’s warm, right under my feet, with all I have to do,” said she. Her voice had an actual acidity of sound.
Joe gasped. He was a large man with a constant expression of wondering inquiry. It was the expres- sion of his babyhood; he had never lost it, and it was an expression which revealed truly the state of his mind. Always had Joe Beecher wondered, first of all at finding himself in the world at all, then at the various happenings of existence. He probably wondered more about the fact of his marriage with Alma Bennet than anything else, although he never betrayed his wonder. He was always painfully anxious to please his wife, of whom he stood in awe. Now he hastened to reply: “Why, no, Alma; of course I won’t.”
“Because,” said Alma, “I haven’t come to my time of life, through all the trials I’ve had, to be taking any chances of breaking my bones over any miserable, furry, four-footed animal that wouldn’t catch a mouse if one run right under her nose.”
“I don’t want any cat,” repeated Joe, miserably. His fear and awe of the two women increased. When his sister-in-law turned upon him he fairly cringed.
“Cats!” said Amanda. Then she sniffed. The sniff was worse than speech.
Joe repeated in a mumble that he didn’t want any cats, and went out, closing the door softly after him, as he had been taught. However, he was en- tirely sure, in the depths of his subjugated masculine mind, that his wife and her sister had no legal au- thority whatever to interfere with their uncle’s right to keep a hundred coal fires in his woodshed, for a thousand cats. He always had an inner sense of glee when he heard the two women talk over the matter. Once Amanda had declared that she did not believe that Tom Hopkinson knew much about law, anyway.
“He seems to stand pretty high,” Joe ventured with the utmost mildness.
“Yes, he does,” admitted Alma, grudgingly.
“It does not follow he knows law,” persisted Amanda, “and it MAY follow that he likes cats. There was that great Maltese tommy brushing round all the time we were in his office, but I didn’t dare shoo him off for fear it might be against the law.” Amanda laughed, a very disagreeable little laugh. Joe said nothing, but inwardly he chuckled. It was the cause of man with man. He realized a great, even affectionate, understanding of Jim.
The day after his nieces had visited the lawyer’s office, Jim was preparing to call on his friend Edward Hayward, the minister. Before leaving he looked carefully after the fire in the woodshed. The stove was large. Jim piled on the coal, regardless out- wardly that the housekeeper, Susan Adkins, had slammed the kitchen door to indicate her contempt. Inwardly Jim felt hurt, but he had felt hurt so long from the same cause that the sensation had become chronic, and was borne with a gentle patience. Moreover, there was something which troubled him more and was the reason for his contemplated call on his friend. He evened the coals on the fire with great care, and replenished from the pail in the ice- box the cats’ saucers. There was a circle of clean white saucers around the stove. Jim owned many cats; counting the kittens, there were probably over twenty. Mrs. Adkins counted them in the sixties. “Those sixty-seven cats,” she said.
Jim often gave away cats when he was confident of securing good homes, but supply exceeded the demand. Now and then tragedies took place in that woodshed. Susan Adkins came bravely to the front upon these occasions. Quite convinced was Susan Adkins that she had a good home, and it behooved her to keep it, and she did not in the least object to drowning, now and then, a few very young kittens. She did this with neatness and despatch while Jim walked to the store on an errand and was supposed to know nothing about it. There was simply not enough room in his woodshed for the accumulation of cats, although his heart could have held all.
That day, as he poured out the milk, cats of all ages and sizes and colors purred in a softly padding multitude around his feet, and he regarded them with love. There were tiger cats, Maltese cats, black- and-white cats, black cats and white cats, tommies and females, and his heart leaped to meet the plead- ing mews of all. The saucers were surrounded. Little pink tongues lapped. “Pretty pussy! pretty pussy!” cooed Jim, addressing them in general. He put on his overcoat and hat, which he kept on a peg behind the door. Jim had an arm-chair in the wood- shed. He always sat there when he smoked; Susan Adkins demurred at his smoking in the house, which she kept so nice, and Jim did not dream of rebellion. He never questioned the right of a woman to bar tobacco smoke from a house. Before leaving he refilled some of the saucers. He was not sure that all of the cats were there; some might be afield, hunting, and he wished them to find refreshment when they returned. He stroked the splendid striped back of a great tiger tommy which filled his arm- chair. This cat was his special pet. He fastened the outer shed door with a bit of rope in order that it might not blow entirely open, and yet allow his feline friends to pass, should they choose. Then he went out.
The day was clear, with a sharp breath of frost. The fields gleamed with frost, offering to the eye a fine shimmer as of diamond-dust under the brilliant blue sky, overspread in places with a dapple of little white clouds.
“White frost and mackerel sky; going to be falling weather,” Jim said, aloud, as he went out of the yard, crunching the crisp grass under heel.
Susan Adkins at a window saw his lips moving. His talking to himself made her nervous, although it did not render her distrustful of his sanity. It was fortunate that Susan had not told Jim that she disliked his habit. In that case he would have deprived himself of that slight solace; he would not have dreamed of opposing Susan’s wishes. Jim had a great pity for the nervous whims, as he regarded them, of women — a pity so intense and tender that it verged on respect and veneration. He passed his nieces’ house on the way to the minister’s, and both were looking out of windows and saw his lips moving.
“There he goes, talking to himself like a crazy loon,” said Amanda.
Alma nodded.
Jim went on, blissfully unconscious. He talked in a quiet monotone; only now and then his voice rose; only now and then there were accompanying gestures. Jim had a straight mile down the broad village street to walk before he reached the church and the parsonage beside it.
Jim and the minister had been friends since boy- hood. They were graduates and classmates of the same college. Jim had had unusual educational ad- vantages for a man coming from a simple family. The front door of the parsonage flew open when Jim entered the gate, and the minister stood there smiling. He was a tall, thin man with a wide mouth, which either smiled charmingly or was set with severity. He was as brown and dry as a wayside weed which winter had subdued as to bloom but could not entirely prostrate with all its icy storms and compelling blasts. Jim, advancing eagerly tow- ard the warm welcome in the door, was a small man, and bent at that, but he had a handsome old face, with the rose of youth on the cheeks and the light of youth in the blue eyes, and the quick changes of youth, before emotions, about the mouth.
“Hullo, Jim!” cried Dr. Edward Hayward. Hay- ward, for a doctor of divinity, was considered some- what lacking in dignity at times; still, he was Dr. Hayward, and the failing was condoned. More- over, he was a Hayward, and the Haywards had been, from the memory of the oldest inhabitant, the great people of the village. Dr. Hayward’s house was presided over by his widowed cousin, a lady of enough dignity to make up for any lack of it in the minister. There were three servants, besides the old butler who had been Hayward’s attendant when he had been a young man in college. Village people were proud of their minister, with his degree and what they considered an imposing household retinue.
Hayward led, and Jim followed, to the least pre- tentious room in the house — not the study proper, which was lofty, book-lined, and leather-furnished, curtained with broad sweeps of crimson damask, but a little shabby place back of it, accessible by a nar- row door. The little room was lined with shelves; they held few books, but a collection of queer and dusty things — strange weapons, minerals, odds and ends — which the minister loved and with which his lady cousin never interfered.
“Louisa,” Hayward had told his cousin when she entered upon her post, “do as you like with the whole house, but let my little study alone. Let it look as if it had been stirred up with a garden-rake — that little room is my territory, and no disgrace to you, my dear, if the dust rises in clouds at every step.”
Jim was as fond of the little room as his friend. He entered, and sighed a great sigh of satisfaction as he sank into the shabby, dusty hollow of a large chair before the hearth fire. Immediately a black cat leaped into his lap, gazed at him with green- jewel eyes, worked her paws, purred, settled into a coil, and slept. Jim lit his pipe and threw the match blissfully on the floor. Dr. Hayward set an electric coffee-urn at its work, for the little room was a curious mixture of the comfortable old and the comfortable modern.
“Sam shall serve our luncheon in here,” he said, with a staid glee.
Jim nodded happily.
“Louisa will not mind,” said Hayward. “She is precise, but she has a fine regard for the rights of the individual, which is most commendable.” He seated himself in a companion chair to Jim’s, lit his own pipe, and threw the match on the floor. Occasion- ally, when the minister was out, Sam, without orders so to do, cleared the floor of matches.
Hayward smoked and regarded his friend, who looked troubled despite his comfort. “What is it, Jim?” asked the minister at last.
“I don’t know how to do what is right for me to do,” replied the little man, and his face, turned toward his friend, had the puzzled earnestness of a child.
Hayward laughed. It was easily seen that his was the keener mind. In natural endowments there had never been equality, although there was great similarity of tastes. Jim, despite his education, often lapsed into the homely vernacular of which he heard so much. An involuntarily imitative man in externals was Jim, but essentially an original. Jim proceeded.
“You know, Edward, I have never been one to complain,” he said, with an almost boyish note of apology.
“Never complained half enough; that’s the trou- ble,” returned the other.
“Well, I overheard something Mis’ Adkins said to Mis’ Amos Trimmer the other afternoon. Mis’ Trimmer was calling on Mis’ Adkins. I couldn’t help overhearing unless I went outdoors, and it was snowing and I had a cold. I wasn’t listening.”
“Had a right to listen if you wanted to,” declared Hayward, irascibly.
“Well, I couldn’t help it unless I went outdoors. Mis’ Adkins she was in the kitchen making light- bread for supper, and Mis’ Trimmer had sat right down there with her. Mis’ Adkins’s kitchen is as clean as a parlor, anyway. Mis’ Adkins said to Mis’ Trimmer, speaking of me — because Mis’ Trimmer had just asked where I was and Mis’ Adkins had said I was out in the woodshed sitting with the cats and smoking — Mis’ Adkins said, ‘He’s just a door- mat, that’s what he is.’ Then Mis’ Trimmer says, ‘The way he lets folks ride over him beats me.’ Then Mis’ Adkins says again: ‘He’s nothing but a door-mat. He lets everybody that wants to just trample on him and grind their dust into him, and he acts real pleased and grateful.'”
Hayward’s face flushed. “Did Mrs. Adkins men- tion that she was one of the people who used you for a door-mat?” he demanded.
Jim threw back his head and laughed like a child, with the sweetest sense of unresentful humor. “Lord bless my soul, Edward,” replied Jim, “I don’t be- lieve she ever thought of that.”
“And at that very minute you, with a hard cold, were sitting out in that draughty shed smoking because she wouldn’t allow you to smoke in your own house!”
“I don’t mind that, Edward,” said Jim, and laughed again.
“Could you see to read your paper out there, with only that little shed window? And don’t you like to read your paper while you smoke?”
“Oh yes,” admitted Jim; “but my! I don’t mind little things like that! Mis’ Adkins is only a poor widow woman, and keeping my house nice and not having it smell of tobacco is all she’s got. They can talk about women’s rights — I feel as if they ought to have them fast enough, if they want them, poor things; a woman has a hard row to hoe, and will have, if she gets all the rights in creation. But I guess the rights they’d find it hardest to give up would be the rights to have men look after them just a little more than they look after other men, just because they are women. When I think of Annie Berry — the girl I was going to marry, you know, if she hadn’t died — I feel as if I couldn’t do enough for another woman. Lord! I’m glad to sit out in the woodshed and smoke. Mis’ Adkins is pretty good-natured to stand all the cats.”
Then the coffee boiled, and Hayward poured out some for Jim and himself. He had a little silver ser- vice at hand, and willow-ware cups and saucers. Presently Sam appeared, and Hayward gave orders concerning luncheon.
“Tell Miss Louisa we are to have it served here,” said he, “and mind, Sam, the chops are to be thick and cooked the way we like them; and don’t forget the East India chutney, Sam.”
“It does seem rather a pity that you cannot have chutney at home with your chops, when you are so fond of it,” remarked Hayward when Sam had gone.
“Mis’ Adkins says it will give me liver trouble, and she isn’t strong enough to nurse.”
“So you have to eat her ketchup?”
“Well, she doesn’t put seasoning in it,” admitted Jim. “But Mis’ Adkins doesn’t like seasoning her- self, and I don’t mind.”
“And I know the chops are never cut thick, the way we like them.”
“Mis’ Adkins likes her meat well done, and she can’t get such thick chops well done. I suppose our chops are rather thin, but I don’t mind.”
“Beefsteak and chops, both cut thin, and fried up like sole-leather. I know!” said Dr. Hayward, and he stamped his foot with unregenerate force.
“I don’t mind a bit, Edward.”
“You ought to mind, when it is your own house, and you buy the food and pay your housekeeper. It is an outrage!”
“I don’t mind, really, Edward.”
Dr. Hayward regarded Jim with a curious ex- pression compounded of love, anger, and contempt. “Any more talk of legal proceedings?” he asked, brusquely.
Jim flushed. “Tom ought not to tell of that.”
“Yes, he ought; he ought to tell it all over town. He doesn’t, but he ought. It is an outrage! Here you have been all these years supporting your nieces, and they are working away like field-mice, burrowing under your generosity, trying to get a chance to take action and appropriate your property and have you put under a guardian.”
“I don’t mind a bit,” said Jim; “but –“
The other man looked inquiringly at him, and, seeing a pitiful working of his friend’s face, he jumped up and got a little jar from a shelf. “We will drop the whole thing until we have had our chops and chutney,” said he. “You are right; it is not worth minding. Here is a new brand of tobacco I want you to try. I don’t half like it, myself, but you may.”
Jim, with a pleased smile, reached out for the tobacco, and the two men smoked until Sam brought the luncheon. It was well cooked and well served on an antique table. Jim was thoroughly happy. It was not until the luncheon was over and another pipe smoked that the troubled, perplexed expression returned to his face.
“Now,” said Hayward, “out with it!”
“It is only the old affair about Alma and Amanda, but now it has taken on a sort of new aspect.”
“What do you mean by a new aspect?”
“It seems,” said Jim, slowly, “as if they were making it so I couldn’t do for them.”
Hayward stamped his foot. “That does sound new,” he said, dryly. “I never thought Alma Beecher or Amanda Bennet ever objected to have you do for them.”
“Well,” said Jim, “perhaps they don’t now, but they want me to do it in their own way. They don’t want to feel as if I was giving and they taking; they want it to seem the other way round. You see, if I were to deed over my property to them, and then they allowance me, they would feel as if they were doing the giving.”
“Jim, you wouldn’t be such a fool as that?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” replied Jim, simply. “They wouldn’t know how to take care of it, and Mis’ Adkins would be left to shift for herself. Joe Beecher is real good-hearted, but he always lost every dollar he touched. No, there wouldn’t be any sense in that. I don’t mean to give in, but I do feel pretty well worked up over it.”
“What have they said to you?”
Jim hesitated.
“Out with it, now. One thing you may be sure of: nothing that you can tell me will alter my opinion of your two nieces for the worse. As for poor Joe Beecher, there is no opinion, one way or the other. What did they say?”
Jim regarded his friend with a curiously sweet, far-off expression. “Edward,” he said, “sometimes I believe that the greatest thing a man’s friends can do for him is to drive him into a corner with God; to be so unjust to him that they make him under- stand that God is all that mortal man is meant to have, and that is why he finds out that most people, especially the ones he does for, don’t care for him.”
Hayward looked solemnly and tenderly at the other’s almost rapt face. “You are right, I suppose, old man,” said he; “but what did they do?”
“They called me in there about a week ago and gave me an awful talking to.”
“About what?”
Jim looked at his friend with dignity. “They were two women talking, and they went into little matters not worth repeating,” said he. “All is — they seemed to blame me for everything I had ever done for them, and for everything I had ever done, anyway. They seemed to blame me for being born and living, and, most of all, for doing anything for them.”
“It is an outrage!” declared Hayward. “Can’t you see it?”
“I can’t seem to see anything plain about it,” returned Jim, in a bewildered way. “I always sup- posed a man had to do something bad to be given a talking to; but it isn’t so much that, and I don’t bear any malice against them. They are only two women, and they are nervous. What worries me is, they do need things, and they can’t get on and be comfortable unless I do for them; but if they are going to feel that way about it, it seems to cut me off from doing, and that does worry me, Edward.”
The other man stamped. “Jim Bennet,” he said, “they have talked, and now I am going to.”
“You, Edward?”
“Yes, I am. It is entirely true what those two women, Susan Adkins and Mrs. Trimmer, said about you. You ARE a door-mat, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself for it. A man should be a man, and not a door-mat. It is the worst thing in the world for people to walk over him and trample him. It does them much more harm than it does him. In the end the trampler is much worse off than the trampled upon. Jim Bennet, your being a door- mat may cost other people their souls’ salvation. You are selfish in the grain to be a door-mat.”
Jim turned pale. His child-like face looked sud- denly old with his mental effort to grasp the other’s meaning. In fact, he was a child — one of the little ones of the world — although he had lived the span of a man’s life. Now one of the hardest problems of the elders of the world was presented to him. “You mean –” he said, faintly.
“I mean, Jim, that for the sake of other people, if not for your own sake, you ought to stop being a door-mat and be a man in this world of men.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to go straight to those nieces of yours and tell them the truth. You know what your wrongs are as well as I do. You know what those two women are as well as I do. They keep the letter of the Ten Commandments — that is right. They attend my church — that is right. They scour the outside of the platter until it is bright enough to blind those people who don’t understand them; but inwardly they are petty, ravening wolves of greed and ingratitude. Go and tell them; they don’t know themselves. Show them what they are. It is your Christian duty.”
“You don’t mean for me to stop doing for them?”
“I certainly do mean just that — for a while, anyway.”
“They can’t possibly get along, Edward; they will suffer.”
“They have a little money, haven’t they?”
“Only a little in savings-bank. The interest pays their taxes.”
“And you gave them that?”
Jim colored.
“Very well, their taxes are paid for this year; let them use that money. They will not suffer, ex- cept in their feelings, and that is where they ought to suffer. Man, you would spoil all the work of the Lord by your selfish tenderness toward sinners!”
“They aren’t sinners.”
“Yes, they are — spiritual sinners, the worst kind in the world. Now –“
“You don’t mean for me to go now?”
“Yes, I do — now. If you don’t go now you never will. Then, afterward, I want you to go home and sit in your best parlor and smoke, and have all your cats in there, too.”
Jim gasped. “But, Edward! Mis’ Adkins –“
“I don’t care about Mrs. Adkins. She isn’t as bad as the rest, but she needs her little lesson, too.”
“Edward, the way that poor woman works to keep the house nice — and she don’t like the smell of tobacco smoke.”
“Never mind whether she likes it or not. You smoke.”
“And she don’t like cats.”
“Never mind. Now you go.”
Jim stood up. There was a curious change in his rosy, child-like face. There was a species of quicken- ing. He looked at once older and more alert. His friend’s words had charged him as with electricity. When he went down the street he looked taller.
Amanda Bennet and Alma Beecher, sitting sewing at their street windows, made this mistake.
“That isn’t Uncle Jim,” said Amanda. “That man is a head taller, but he looks a little like him.”
“It can’t be Uncle Jim,” agreed Alma. Then both started.
“It is Uncle Jim, and he is coming here,” said Amanda.
Jim entered. Nobody except himself, his nieces, and Joe Beecher ever knew exactly what happened, what was the aspect of the door-mat erected to human life, of the worm turned to menace. It must have savored of horror, as do all meek and down- trodden things when they gain, driven to bay, the strength to do battle. It must have savored of the god-like, when the man who had borne with patience, dignity, and sorrow for them the stings of lesser things because they were lesser things, at last arose and revealed himself superior, with a great height of the spirit, with the power to crush.
When Jim stopped talking and went home, two pale, shocked faces of women gazed after him from the windows. Joe Beecher was sobbing like a child. Finally his wife turned her frightened face upon him, glad to have still some one to intimidate.
“For goodness’ sake, Joe Beecher, stop crying like a baby,” said she, but she spoke in a queer whis- per, for her lips were stiff.
Joe stood up and made for the door.
“Where are you going?” asked his wife.
“Going to get a job somewhere,” replied Joe, and went. Soon the women saw him driving a neighbor’s cart up the street.
“He’s going to cart gravel for John Leach’s new sidewalk!” gasped Alma.
“Why don’t you stop him?” cried her sister. “You can’t have your husband driving a tip-cart for John Leach. Stop him, Alma!”
“I can’t stop him,” moaned Alma. “I don’t feel as if I could stop anything.”
Her sister gazed at her, and the same expression was on both faces, making them more than sisters of the flesh. Both saw before them a stern boundary wall against which they might press in vain for the rest of their lives, and both saw the same sins of their hearts.
Meantime Jim Bennet was seated in his best parlor and Susan Adkins was whispering to Mrs. Trimmer out in the kitchen.
“I don’t know whether he’s gone stark, staring mad or not,” whispered Susan, “but he’s in the parlor smoking his worst old pipe, and that big tiger tommy is sitting in his lap, and he’s let in all the other cats, and they’re nosing round, and I don’t dare drive ’em out. I took up the broom, then I put it away again. I never knew Mr. Bennet to act so. I can’t think what’s got into him.”
“Did he say anything?”
“No, he didn’t say much of anything, but he said it in a way that made my flesh fairly creep. Says he, ‘As long as this is my house and my furniture and my cats, Mis’ Adkins, I think I’ll sit down in the parlor, where I can see to read my paper and smoke at the same time.’ Then he holds the kitchen door open, and he calls, ‘Kitty, kitty, kitty!’ and that great tiger tommy comes in with his tail up, rubbing round his legs, and all the other cats followed after. I shut the door before these last ones got into the parlor.” Susan Adkins regarded malevolently the three tortoise-shell cats of three generations and vari- ous stages of growth, one Maltese settled in a purring round of comfort with four kittens, and one perfectly black cat, which sat glaring at her with beryl-colored eyes.
“That black cat looks evil,” said Mrs. Trimmer.
“Yes, he does. I don’t know why I didn’t drown him when he was a kitten.”
“Why didn’t you drown all those Malty kittens?”
“The old cat hid them away until they were too big. Then he wouldn’t let me. What do you sup- pose has come to him? Just smell that awful pipe!”
“Men do take queer streaks every now and then,” said Mrs. Trimmer. “My husband used to, and he was as good as they make ’em, poor man. He would eat sugar on his beefsteak, for one thing. The first time I saw him do it I was scared. I thought he was plum crazy, but afterward I found out it was just because he was a man, and his ma hadn’t wanted him to eat sugar when he was a boy. Mr. Bennet will get over it.”
“He don’t act as if he would.”
“Oh yes, he will. Jim Bennet never stuck to anything but being Jim Bennet for very long in his life, and this ain’t being Jim Bennet.”
“He is a very good man,” said Susan with a somewhat apologetic tone.
“He’s too good.”
“He’s too good to cats.”
“Seems to me he’s too good to ‘most everybody. Think what he has done for Amanda and Alma, and how they act!”
“Yes, they are ungrateful and real mean to him; and I feel sometimes as if I would like to tell them just what I think of them,” said Susan Adkins. “Poor man, there he is, studying all the time what he can do for people, and he don’t get very much himself.”
Mrs. Trimmer arose to take leave. She had a long, sallow face, capable of a sarcastic smile. “Then,” said she, “if I were you I wouldn’t begrudge him a chair in the parlor and a chance to read and smoke and hold a pussy-cat.”
“Who said I was begrudging it? I can air out the parlor when he’s got over the notion.”
“Well, he will, so you needn’t worry,” said Mrs. Trimmer. As she went down the street she could see Jim’s profile beside the parlor window, and she smiled her sarcastic smile, which was not altogether unpleasant. “He’s stopped smoking, and he ain’t reading,” she told herself. “It won’t be very long before he’s Jim Bennet again.”
But it was longer than she anticipated, for Jim’s will was propped by Edward Hayward’s. Edward kept Jim to his standpoint for weeks, until a few days before Christmas. Then came self-assertion, that self-assertion of negation which was all that Jim possessed in such a crisis. He called upon Dr. Hayward; the two were together in the little study for nearly an hour, and talk ran high, then Jim prevailed.
“It’s no use, Edward,” he said; “a man can’t be made over when he’s cut and dried in one fashion, the way I am. Maybe I’m doing wrong, but to me it looks like doing right, and there’s something in the Bible about every man having his own right and wrong. If what you say is true, and I am hin- dering the Lord Almighty in His work, then it is for Him to stop me. He can do it. But meantime I’ve got to go on doing the way I always have. Joe has been trying to drive that tip-cart, and the horse ran away with him twice. Then he let the cart fall on his foot and mash one of his toes, and he can hardly get round, and Amanda and Alma don’t dare touch that money in the bank for fear of not having enough to pay the taxes next year in case I don’t help them. They only had a little money on hand when I gave them that talking to, and Christmas is ‘most here, and they haven’t got things they really need. Amanda’s coat that she wore to meeting last Sunday didn’t look very warm to me, and poor Alma had her furs chewed up by the Leach dog, and she’s going without any. They need lots of things. And poor Mis’ Adkins is ‘most sick with tobacco smoke. I can see it, though she doesn’t say anything, and the nice parlor curtains are full of it, and cat hairs are all over things. I can’t hold out any longer, Edward. Maybe I am a door-mat; and if I am, and it is wicked, may the Lord forgive me, for I’ve got to keep right on being a door-mat.”
Hayward sighed and lighted his pipe. However, he had given up and connived with Jim.
On Christmas eve the two men were in hiding behind a clump of cedars in the front yard of Jim’s nieces’ house. They watched the expressman deliver a great load of boxes and packages. Jim drew a breath of joyous relief.
“They are taking them in,” he whispered — “they are taking them in, Edward!”
Hayward looked down at the dim face of the man beside him, and something akin to fear entered his heart. He saw the face of a lifelong friend, but he saw something in it which he had never recog- nized before. He saw the face of one of the children of heaven, giving only for the sake of the need of others, and glorifying the gifts with the love and pity of an angel.
“I was afraid they wouldn’t take them!” whis- pered Jim, and his watching face was beautiful, although it was only the face of a little, old man of a little village, with no great gift of intellect. There was a full moon riding high; the ground was covered with a glistening snow-level, over which wavered wonderful shadows, as of wings. One great star pre- vailed despite the silver might of the moon. To Hayward Jim’s face seemed to prevail, as that star, among all the faces of humanity.
Jim crept noiselessly toward a window, Hayward at his heels. The two could see the lighted interior plainly.
“See poor Alma trying on her furs,” whispered Jim, in a rapture. “See Amanda with her coat. They have found the money. See Joe heft the tur- key.” Suddenly he caught Hayward’s arm, and the two crept away. Out on the road, Jim fairly sobbed with pure delight. “Oh, Edward,” he said,”I am so thankful they took the things! I was so afraid they wouldn’t, and they needed them! Oh, Edward, I am so thankful!” Edward pressed his friend’s arm.
When they reached Jim’s house a great tiger-cat leaped to Jim’s shoulder with the silence and swift- ness of a shadow. “He’s always watching for me,” said Jim, proudly. “Pussy! Pussy!” The cat be- gan to purr loudly, and rubbed his splendid head against the man’s cheek.
“I suppose,” said Hayward, with something of awe in his tone, “that you won’t smoke in the parlor to-night?”
“Edward, I really can’t. Poor woman, she’s got it all aired and beautifully cleaned, and she’s so happy over it. There’s a good fire in the shed, and I will sit there with the pussy-cats until I go to bed. Oh, Edward, I am so thankful that they took the things!”
“Good night, Jim.”
“Good night. You don’t blame me, Edward?”
“Who am I to blame you, Jim? Good night.”
Hayward watched the little man pass along the path to the shed door. Jim’s back was slightly bent, but to his friend it seemed bent beneath a holy burden of love and pity for all humanity, and the inheritance of the meek seemed to crown that drooping old head. The door-mat, again spread freely for the trampling feet of all who got comfort thereby, became a blessed thing. The humble creature, despised and held in contempt like One greater than he, giving for the sake of the needs of others, went along the narrow foot-path through the snow. The minister took off his hat and stood watching until the door was opened and closed and the little window gleamed with golden light.
THE AMETHYST COMB
THE AMETHYST COMB
MISS JANE CAREW was at the railroad station waiting for the New York train. She was about to visit her friend, Mrs. Viola Longstreet. With Miss Carew was her maid, Margaret, a middle- aged New England woman, attired in the stiffest and most correct of maid-uniforms. She carried an old, large sole-leather bag, and also a rather large sole-leather jewel-case. The jewel-case, carried openly, was rather an unusual sight at a New Eng- land railroad station, but few knew what it was. They concluded it to be Margaret’s special hand- bag. Margaret was a very tall, thin woman, un- bending as to carriage and expression. The one thing out of absolute plumb about Margaret was her little black bonnet. That was askew. Time had bereft the woman of so much hair that she could fasten no head-gear with security, especially when the wind blew, and that morning there was a stiff gale. Margaret’s bonnet was cocked over one eye. Miss Carew noticed it.
“Margaret, your bonnet is crooked,” she said.
Margaret straightened her bonnet, but immedi- ately the bonnet veered again to the side, weighted by a stiff jet aigrette. Miss Carew observed the careen of the bonnet, realized that it was inevitable, and did not mention it again. Inwardly she resolved upon the removal of the jet aigrette later on. Miss Carew was slightly older than Margaret, and dressed in a style somewhat beyond her age. Jane Carew had been alert upon the situation of departing youth. She had eschewed gay colors and extreme cuts, and had her bonnets made to order, because there were no longer anything but hats in the millinery shop. The milliner in Wheaton, where Miss Carew lived, had objected, for Jane Carew inspired reverence.
“A bonnet is too old for you. Miss Carew,” she said. “Women much older than you wear hats.”
“I trust that I know what is becoming to a woman of my years, thank you. Miss Waters,” Jane had replied, and the milliner had meekly taken her order.
After Miss Carew had left, the milliner told her girls that she had never seen a woman so perfectly crazy to look her age as Miss Carew. “And she a pretty woman, too,” said the milliner; “as straight as an arrer, and slim, and with all that hair, scarcely turned at all.”
Miss Carew, with all her haste to assume years, remained a pretty woman, softly slim, with an abun- dance of dark hair, showing little gray. Sometimes Jane reflected, uneasily, that it ought at her time of life to be entirely gray. She hoped nobody would suspect her of dyeing it. She wore it parted in the middle, folded back smoothly, and braided in a compact mass on the top of her head. The style of her clothes was slightly behind the fashion, just enough to suggest conservatism and age. She car- ried a little silver-bound bag in one nicely gloved hand; with the other she held daintily out of the dust of the platform her dress-skirt. A glimpse of a silk frilled petticoat, of slender feet, and ankles delicately slim, was visible before the onslaught of the wind. Jane Carew made no futile effort to keep her skirts down before the wind-gusts. She was so much of the gentlewoman that she could be gravely oblivious to the exposure of her ankles. She looked as if she had never heard of ankles when her black silk skirts lashed about them. She rose superbly above the situation. For some abstruse reason Mar- garet’s skirts were not affected by the wind. They might have been weighted with buckram, although it was no longer in general use. She stood, except for her veering bonnet, as stiffly immovable as a wooden doll.
Miss Carew seldom left Wheaton. This visit to New York was an innovation. Quite a crowd gath- ered about Jane’s sole-leather trunk when it was dumped on the platform by the local expressman. “Miss Carew is going to New York,” one said to another, with much the same tone as if he had said, “The great elm on the common is going to move into Dr. Jones’s front yard.”
When the train arrived, Miss Carew, followed by Margaret, stepped aboard with a majestic disregard of ankles. She sat beside a window, and Margaret placed the bag on the floor and held the jewel-case in her lap. The case contained the Carew jewels. They were not especially valuable, although they were rather numerous. There were cameos in brooches and heavy gold bracelets; corals which Miss Carew had not worn since her young girlhood. There were a set of garnets, some badly cut diamonds in ear-rings and rings, some seed-pearl ornaments, and a really beautiful set of amethysts. There were a necklace, two brooches — a bar and a circle — ear- rings, a ring, and a comb. Each piece was charm- ing, set in filigree gold with seed-pearls, but perhaps of them all the comb was the best. It was a very large comb. There was one great amethyst in the center of the top; on either side was an intricate pattern of plums in small amethysts, and seed-pearl grapes, with leaves and stems of gold. Margaret in charge of the jewel-case was imposing. When they arrived in New York she confronted every- body whom she met with a stony stare, which was almost accusative and convictive of guilt, in spite of entire innocence on the part of the person stared at. It was inconceivable that any mortal would have dared lay violent hands upon that jewel-case under that stare. It would have seemed to partake of the nature of grand larceny from Providence.
When the two reached the up-town residence of Viola Longstreet, Viola gave a little scream at the sight of the case.
“My dear Jane Carew, here you are with Mar- garet carrying that jewel-case out in plain sight. How dare you do such a thing? I really wonder you have not been held up a dozen times.”
Miss Carew smiled her gentle but almost stern smile — the Carew smile, which consisted in a widen- ing and slightly upward curving of tightly closed lips.
“I do not think,” said she, “that anybody would be apt to interfere with Margaret.”
Viola Longstreet laughed, the ringing peal of a child, although she was as old as Miss Carew. “I think you are right, Jane,” said she. “I don’t be- lieve a crook in New York would dare face that maid of yours. He would as soon encounter Ply- mouth Rock. I am glad you have brought your de- lightful old jewels, although you never wear any- thing except those lovely old pearl sprays and dull diamonds.”
“Now,” stated Jane, with a little toss of pride, “I have Aunt Felicia’s amethysts.”
“Oh, sure enough! I remember you did write me last summer that she had died and you had the amethysts at last. She must have been very old.”
“Ninety-one.”
“She might have given you the amethysts before. You, of course, will wear them; and I — am going to borrow the corals!”
Jane Carew gasped.
“You do not object, do you, dear? I have a new dinner-gown which clamors for corals, and my bank- account is strained, and I could buy none equal to those of yours, anyway.”
“Oh, I do not object,” said Jane Carew; still she looked aghast.
Viola Longstreet shrieked with laughter. “Oh, I know. You think the corals too young for me. You have not worn them since you left off dotted muslin. My dear, you insisted upon growing old — I insisted upon remaining young. I had two new dotted muslins last summer. As for corals, I would wear them in the face of an opposing army! Do not judge me by yourself, dear. You laid hold of Age and held him, although you had your com- plexion and your shape and hair. As for me, I had my complexion and kept it. I also had my hair and kept it. My shape has been a struggle, but it was worth while. I, my dear, have held Youth so tight that he has almost choked to death, but held him I have. You cannot deny it. Look at me, Jane Carew, and tell me if, judging by my looks, you can reasonably state that I have no longer the right to wear corals.”
Jane Carew looked. She smiled the Carew smile. “You DO look very young, Viola,” said Jane, “but you are not.”
“Jane Carew,” said Viola, “I am young. May I wear your corals at my dinner to-morrow night?”
“Why, of course, if you think –“
“If I think them suitable. My dear, if there were on this earth ornaments more suitable to ex- treme youth than corals, I would borrow them if you owned them, but, failing that, the corals will answer. Wait until you see me in that taupe dinner-gown and the corals!”
Jane waited. She visited with Viola, whom she loved, although they had little in common, partly because of leading widely different lives, partly be- cause of constitutional variations. She was dressed for dinner fully an hour before it was necessary, and she sat in the library reading when Viola swept in.
Viola was really entrancing. It was a pity that Jane Carew had such an unswerving eye for the essential truth that it could not be appeased by actual effect. Viola had doubtless, as she had said, struggled to keep her slim shape, but she had kept it, and, what was more, kept it without evidence of struggle. If she was in the least hampered by tight lacing and length of undergarment, she gave no evidence of it as she curled herself up in a big chair and (Jane wondered how she could bring her- self to do it) crossed her legs, revealing one delicate foot and ankle, silk-stockinged with taupe, and shod with a coral satin slipper with a silver heel and a great silver buckle. On Viola’s fair round neck the Carew corals lay bloomingly; her beautiful arms were clasped with them; a great coral brooch with wonderful carving confined a graceful fold of the taupe over one hip, a coral comb surmounted the shining waves of Viola’s hair. Viola was an ash- blonde, her complexion was as roses, and the corals were ideal for her. As Jane regarded her friend’s beauty, however, the fact that Viola was not young, that she was as old as herself, hid it and overshad- owed it.
“Well, Jane, don’t you think I look well in the corals, after all?” asked Viola, and there was some- thing pitiful in her voice.
When a man or a woman holds fast to youth, even if successfully, there is something of the pitiful and the tragic involved. It is the everlasting struggle of the soul to retain the joy of earth, whose fleeting distinguishes it from heaven, and whose retention is not accomplished without an inner knowledge of its futility.
“I suppose you do, Viola,” replied Jane Carew, with the inflexibility of fate, “but I really think that only very young girls ought to wear corals.”
Viola laughed, but the laugh had a minor cadence. “But I AM a young girl, Jane,” she said. “I MUST be a young girl. I never had any girlhood when I should have had. You know that.”
Viola had married, when very young, a man old enough to be her father, and her wedded life had been a sad affair, to which, however, she seldom alluded. Viola had much pride with regard to the inevitable past.
“Yes,” agreed Jane. Then she added, feeling that more might be expected, “Of course I suppose that marrying so very young does make a difference.”
“Yes,” said Viola, “it does. In fact, it makes of one’s girlhood an anti-climax, of which many dis- pute the wisdom, as you do. But have it I will. Jane, your amethysts are beautiful.”
Jane regarded the clear purple gleam of a stone on her arm. “Yes,” she agreed, “Aunt Felicia’s ame- thysts have always been considered very beautiful.”
“And such a full set,” said Viola.
“Yes,” said Jane. She colored a little, but Viola did not know why. At the last moment Jane had decided not to wear the amethyst comb, because it seemed to her altogether too decorative for a woman of her age, and she was afraid to mention it to Viola. She was sure that Viola would laugh at her and in- sist upon her wearing it.
“The ear-rings are lovely,” said Viola. “My dear, I don’t see how you ever consented to have your ears pierced.”
“I was very young, and my mother wished me to,” replied Jane, blushing.
The door-bell rang. Viola had been covertly lis- tening for it all the time. Soon a very beautiful young man came with a curious dancing step into the room. Harold Lind always gave the effect of dancing when he walked. He always, moreover, gave the effect of extreme youth and of the utmost joy and mirth in life itself. He regarded everything and everybody with a smile as of humorous appre- ciation, and yet the appreciation was so good- natured that it offended nobody.
“Look at me — I am absurd and happy; look at yourself, also absurd and happy; look at every- body else likewise; look at life — a jest so delicious that it is quite worth one’s while dying to be made acquainted with it.” That is what Harold Lind seemed to say. Viola Longstreet became even more youthful under his gaze; even Jane Carew regretted that she had not worn her amethyst comb and be- gan to doubt its unsuitability. Viola very soon called the young man’s attention to Jane’s ame- thysts, and Jane always wondered why she did not then mention the comb. She removed a brooch and a bracelet for him to inspect.
“They are really wonderful,” he declared. “I have never seen greater depth of color in amethysts.”
“Mr. Lind is an authority on jewels,” declared Viola. The young man shot a curious glance at her, which Jane remembered long afterward. It was one of those glances which are as keystones to situations.
Harold looked at the purple stones with the ex- pression of a child with a toy. There was much of the child in the young man’s whole appearance, but of a mischievous and beautiful child, of whom his mother might observe, with adoration and ill- concealed boastfulness, “I can never tell what that child will do next!”
Harold returned the bracelet and brooch to Jane, and smiled at her as if amethysts were a lovely purple joke between her and himself, uniting them by a peculiar bond of fine understanding. “Exqui- site, Miss Carew,” he said. Then he looked at Viola. “Those corals suit you wonderfully, Mrs. Long- street,” he observed, “but amethysts would also suit you.”
“Not with this gown,” replied Viola, rather piti- fully. There was something in the young man’s gaze and tone which she did not understand, but which she vaguely quivered before.
Harold certainly thought the corals were too young for Viola. Jane understood, and felt an unworthy triumph. Harold, who was young enough in actual years to be Viola’s son, and was younger still by reason of his disposition, was amused by the sight of her in corals, although he did not intend to be- tray his amusement. He considered Viola in corals as too rude a jest to share with her. Had poor Viola once grasped Harold Lind’s estimation of her she would have as soon gazed upon herself in her cof- fin. Harold’s comprehension of the essentials was beyond Jane Carew’s. It was fairly ghastly, par- taking of the nature of X-rays, but it never disturbed Harold Lind. He went along his dance-track undis- turbed, his blue eyes never losing their high lights of glee, his lips never losing their inscrutable smile at some happy understanding between life and him- self. Harold had fair hair, which was very smooth and glossy. His skin was like a girl’s. He was so beautiful that he showed cleverness in an affecta- tion of carelessness in dress. He did not like to wear evening clothes, because they had necessarily to be immaculate. That evening Jane regarded him with an inward criticism that he was too handsome for a man. She told Viola so when the dinner was over and he and the other guests had gone.
“He is very handsome,” she said, “but I never like to see a man quite so handsome.”
“You will change your mind when you see him in tweeds,” returned Viola. “He loathes evening clothes.”
Jane regarded her anxiously. There was some- thing in Viola’s tone which disturbed and shocked her. It was inconceivable that Viola should be in love with that youth, and yet — “He looks very young,” said Jane in a prim voice.
“He IS young,” admitted Viola; “still, not quite so young as he looks. Sometimes I tell him he will look like a boy if he lives to be eighty.”
“Well, he must be very young,” persisted Jane.
“Yes,” said Viola, but she did not say how young. Viola herself, now that the excitement was over, did not look so young as at the beginning of the evening. She removed the corals, and Jane con- sidered that she looked much better without them.
“Thank you for your corals, dear,” said Viola. “Where Is Margaret?”
Margaret answered for herself by a tap on the door. She and Viola’s maid, Louisa, had been sit- ting on an upper landing, out of sight, watching the guests down-stairs. Margaret took the corals and placed them in their nest in the jewel-case, also the amethysts, after Viola had gone. The jewel-case was a curious old affair with many compartments. The amethysts required two. The comb was so large that it had one for itself. That was the reason why Margaret did not discover that evening that it was gone. Nobody discovered it for three days, when Viola had a little card-party. There was a whist-table for Jane, who had never given up the reserved and stately game. There were six tables in Viola’s pretty living-room, with a little conserva- tory at one end and a leaping hearth fire at the other. Jane’s partner was a stout old gentleman whose wife was shrieking with merriment at an auction-bridge table. The other whist-players were a stupid, very small young man who was aimlessly willing to play anything, and an amiable young woman who be- lieved in self-denial. Jane played conscientiously. She returned trump leads, and played second hand low, and third high, and it was not until the third rubber was over that she saw. It had been in full evidence from the first. Jane would have seen it before the guests arrived, but Viola had not put it in her hair until the last moment. Viola was wild with delight, yet shamefaced and a trifle uneasy. In a soft, white gown, with violets at her waist, she was playing with Harold Lind, and in her ash-blond hair was Jane Carew’s amethyst comb. Jane gasped and paled. The amiable young woman who was her opponent stared at her. Finally she spoke in a low voice.
“Aren’t you well. Miss Carew?” she asked.
The men, in their turn, stared. The stout one rose fussily. “Let me get a glass of water,” he said. The stupid small man stood up and waved his hands with nervousness.
“Aren’t you well?” asked the amiable young lady again.
Then Jane Carew recovered her poise. It was seldom that she lost it. “I am quite well, thank you, Miss Murdock,” she replied. “I believe diamonds are trumps.”
They all settled again to the play, but the young lady and the two men continued glancing at Miss Carew. She had recovered her dignity of manner, but not her color. Moreover, she had a bewildered expression. Resolutely she abstained from glancing again at her amethyst comb in Viola Longstreet’s ash-blond hair, and gradually, by a course of sub- conscious reasoning as she carefully played her cards, she arrived at a conclusion which caused her color to return and the bewildered expression to disappear. When refreshments were served, the amiable young lady said, kindly:
“You look quite yourself, now, dear Miss Carew, but at one time while we were playing I was really alarmed. You were very pale.”
“I did not feel in the least ill,” replied Jane Carew. She smiled her Carew smile at the young lady. Jane had settled it with herself that of course Viola had borrowed that amethyst comb, appealing to Margaret. Viola ought not to have done that; she should have asked her, Miss Carew; and Jane wondered, because Viola was very well bred; but of course that was what had happened. Jane had come down before Viola, leaving Margaret in her room, and Viola had asked her. Jane did not then remember that Viola had not even been told that there was an amethyst comb in existence. She remembered when Margaret, whose face was as pale and bewildered as her own, mentioned it, when she was brushing her hair.
“I saw it, first thing. Miss Jane,” said Margaret. “Louisa and I were on the landing, and I looked down and saw your amethyst comb in Mrs. Long- street’s hair.”
“She had asked you for it, because I had gone down-stairs?” asked Jane, feebly.
“No, Miss Jane. I had not seen her. I went out right after you did. Louisa had finished Mrs. Longstreet, and she and I went down to the mail- box to post a letter, and then we sat on the landing, and — I saw your comb.”
“Have you,” asked Jane, “looked in the jewel- case?”
“Yes, Miss Jane.”
“And it is not there?”
“It is not there. Miss Jane.” Margaret spoke with a sort of solemn intoning. She recognized what the situation implied, and she, who fitted squarely and entirely into her humble state, was aghast before a hitherto unimagined occurrence. She could not, even with the evidence of her senses against a lady and her mistress’s old friend, believe in them. Had Jane told her firmly that she had not seen that comb in that ash-blond hair she might have been hypnotized into agreement. But Jane simply stared at her, and the Carew dignity was more shaken than she had ever seen it.
“Bring the jewel-case here, Margaret,” ordered Jane in a gasp.
Margaret brought the jewel-case, and everything was taken out; all the compartments were opened, but the amethyst comb was not there. Jane could not sleep that night. At dawn she herself doubted the evidence of her senses. The jewel-case was thor- oughly overlooked again, and still Jane was incredu- lous that she would ever see her comb in Viola’s hair again. But that evening, although there were no guests except Harold Lind, who dined at the house, Viola appeared in a pink-tinted gown, with a knot of violets at her waist, and — she wore the ame- thyst comb. She said not one word concerning it; nobody did. Harold Lind was in wild spirits. The conviction grew upon Jane that the irresponsible, beautiful youth was covertly amusing himself at her, at Viola’s, at everybody’s expense. Perhaps he included himself. He talked incessantly, not in reality brilliantly, but with an effect of sparkling effervescence which was fairly dazzling. Viola’s servants restrained with difficulty their laughter at his sallies. Viola regarded Harold with ill-concealed tenderness and admiration. She herself looked even younger than usual, as if the innate youth in her leaped to meet this charming comrade.
Jane felt sickened by it all. She could not under- stand her friend. Not for one minute did she dream that there could be any serious outcome of the situation; that Viola, would marry this mad youth, who, she knew, was making such covert fun at her expense; but she was bewildered and indignant. She wished that she had not come. That evening when she went to her room she directed Margaret to pack, as she intended to return home the next day. Margaret began folding gowns with alacrity. She was as conservative as her mistress and she severely disapproved of many things. However, the matter of the amethyst comb was uppermost in her mind. She was wild with curiosity. She hardly dared inquire, but finally she did.
“About the amethyst comb, ma’am?” she said, with a delicate cough.
“What about it, Margaret?” returned Jane, severely.
“I thought perhaps Mrs. Longstreet had told you how she happened to have it.”
Poor Jane Carew had nobody in whom to confide. For once she spoke her mind to her maid. “She has not said one word. And, oh, Margaret, I don’t know what to think of it.”
Margaret pursed her lips.
“What do YOU think, Margaret?”
“I don’t know. Miss Jane.”
“I don’t.”
“I did not mention it to Louisa,” said Margaret.
“Oh, I hope not!” cried Jane.
“But she did to me,” said Margaret. “She asked had I seen Miss Viola’s new comb, and then she laughed, and I thought from the way she acted that –” Margaret hesitated.
“That what?”
“That she meant Mr. Lind had given Miss Viola the comb.”
Jane started violently. “Absolutely impossible!” she cried. “That, of course, is nonsense. There must be some explanation. Probably Mrs. Long- street will explain before we go.”
Mrs. Longstreet did not explain. She wondered and expostulated when Jane announced her firm determination to leave, but she seemed utterly at a loss for the reason. She did not mention the comb.
When Jane Carew took leave of her old friend she was entirely sure in her own mind that she would never visit her again — might never even see her again.
Jane was unutterably thankful to be back in her own peaceful home, over which no shadow of absurd mystery brooded; only a calm afternoon light of life, which disclosed gently but did not conceal or betray. Jane settled back into her pleasant life, and the days passed, and the weeks, and the months, and the years. She heard nothing whatever from or about Viola Longstreet for three years. Then, one day, Margaret returned from the city, and she had met Viola’s old maid Louisa in a department store, and she had news. Jane wished for strength to refuse to listen, but she could not muster it. She listened while Margaret brushed her hair.
“Louisa has not been with Miss Viola for a long time,” said Margaret. “She is living with some- body else. Miss Viola lost her money, and had to give up her house and her servants, and Louisa said she cried when she said good-by.”
Jane made an effort. “What became of –” she began.
Margaret answered the unfinished sentence. She was excited by gossip as by a stimulant. Her thin cheeks burned, her eyes blazed. “Mr. Lind,” said Margaret, “Louisa told me, had turned out to be real bad. He got into some money trouble, and then” — Margaret lowered her voice — “he was ar- rested for taking a lot of money which didn’t belong to him. Louisa said he had been in some business where he handled a lot of other folks’ money, and he cheated the men who were in the business with him, and he was tried, and Miss Viola, Louisa thinks, hid away somewhere so they wouldn’t call her to testify, and then he had to go to prison; but –” Margaret hesitated.
“What is it?” asked Jane.
“Louisa thinks he died about a year and a half ago. She heard the lady where she lives now talking about it. The lady used to know Miss Viola, and she heard the lady say Mr. Lind had died in prison, that he couldn’t stand the hard life, and that Miss Viola had lost all her money through him, and then” — Margaret hesitated again, and her mistress prodded sharply — “Louisa said that she heard the lady say that she had thought Miss Viola would marry him, but she hadn’t, and she had more sense than she had thought.”
“Mrs. Longstreet would never for one moment have entertained the thought of marrying Mr. Lind; he was young enough to be her grandson,” said Jane, severely.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Margaret.
It so happened that Jane went to New York that day week, and at a jewelry counter in one of the shops she discovered the amethyst comb. There were on sale a number of bits of antique jewelry, the precious flotsam and jetsam of old and wealthy families which had drifted, nobody knew before what currents of adversity, into that harbor of sale for all the world to see. Jane made no inquiries; the saleswoman volunteered simply the information that the comb was a real antique, and the stones were real amethysts and pearls, and the setting was solid gold, and the price was thirty dollars; and Jane bought it. She carried her old amethyst comb home, but she did not show it to anybody. She replaced it in its old compartment in her jewel- case and thought of it with wonder, with a hint of joy at regaining it, and with much sadness. She was still fond of Viola Longstreet. Jane did not easily part with her loves. She did not know where Viola was. Margaret had inquired of Louisa, who did not know. Poor Viola had probably drifted into some obscure harbor of life wherein she was hiding until life was over.
And then Jane met Viola one spring day on Fifth Avenue.
“It is a very long time since I have seen you,” said Jane with a reproachful accent, but her eyes were tenderly inquiring.
“Yes,” agreed Viola. Then she added, “I have seen nobody. Do you know what a change has come in my life?” she asked.
“Yes, dear,” replied Jane, gently. “My Margaret met Louisa once and she told her.”
“Oh yes — Louisa,” said Viola. “I had to dis- charge her. My money is about gone. I have only just enough to keep the wolf from entering the door of a hall bedroom in a respectable boarding-house. However, I often hear him howl, but I do not mind at all. In fact, the howling has become company for me. I rather like it. It is queer what things one can learn to like. There are a few left yet, like the